Flock of Dimes—Head of Roses

Head of Roses is a heartfelt and springly sophomore from Flock of Dimes (Jenn Wesner). Wesner is best-known as a member of Wye Oak but with this, and 2016’s If You See Me, Say Yes, she has carved a definitive, confident line as a solo artist.

What impresses immediately is Head of Roses’ broad soundscape. Every track on the LP does something to be sonically distinct—but none is an outlier or ugly duckling. “Price of Blue” and “No Question” are striking both in their differences and similarities. The former is a full-on Cocteau Twins-style ballad, lifted by exultant and airy strings; the latter is muggy, stripped-back and intimate, grounded by powerful brass. Their commonality is Wesner’s unique artistic sensibility, a quality as hard to describe as it is easy to recognise.

It’s lazy and flippant to compare acts like Flock of Dimes to Kate Bush. Bush, in opening the door for female-fronted pop to revel in its own weirdness and creative bravery, inadvertently became the yardstick by which all future attempts at such auteurship would be measured. But there are undeniably shadows of her style on Head of Roses. Most of these shadows are revealed by Wesner’s luminous vocals; in her voice-as-instrument approach, and the ease with which she leaps huge intervals between notes. The weightless, unpredictable journeys of these vocal lines keep you in a constant state of expectation and vulnerability; stumbling blindly into every next moment.

Head of Roses feels like it is unravelling or writing itself as every moment of listening unfolds. It holds the same tension as when a band improvises. The idea that everything will suddenly fall apart is suspended like a ten-ton block above the stage. And the more precarious, the more on-the-brink a band can make everything feel, the more electrifying their improvisation will feel. Head of Roses dutifully delivers that same spontaneous energy to a world that’s starving for it, and is as close to a live experience many will have felt in a long time.   

Head of Roses is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Mentrix—My Enemy, My Love

“Fusion” is a word as broad and unhelpful as any other genre categorisation. Potentially a stone’s throw from new age, reiki and psytrance, it’s burdened with ten thousand lame associations. So, when “fuses eastern and western sounds” appears on a press release, you can imagine the wave of hesitation. What exactly am I getting here?

My Enemy, My Love, from Iranian artist Mentrix (Samar Rad) is, ostensibly, a fusion album. But rather than diminish the intent of its traditional influences, it rearranges gracefully for our cold and inorganic present. Rad has not sought to make some self-conscious cross-cultural collage: she is, like all of us, living in a newly global world. The term “fusion” belongs in the 1970s, when there was still novelty to catching a flight and global cultures were further than a google away. Nowadays, if we aren’t fusing, we haven’t been listening.

That said, the skeleton of My Enemy, My Love is a traditional Sufi one. Daf drums are built on a large empty frame which, for Rad, has philosophical ramifications unto itself. “When you are truly empty of the world,” she says, “the entire universe can resonate within you.” On this LP, the drums pulse with an unstoppable power and circular, trance-like repetition. Nowhere is this truer than on midpoint track ‘Longing’ where, like the pummelling of revival trilogy Swans, you could just as well be listening to the world’s heartbeat.

These drums are post-processed and surrounded by nasty-fied textures—think the clanging of bedsprings and acidic hiss of The Knife’s Shaking the Habitual—which position the LP as less of a fusion and more a corruption. Through this edgy production, Rad upholds the exultance of her influences. My Enemy, My Love isn’t crushing or depressive. It’s just got a few hundred volts going through it. A fair parallel would be the supercharged Tune-Yards; a little fried, a little freakish, but beautiful and bouncing all the same. Some significant control has been exercised to ensure My Enemy, My Love didn’t get lost in concept, or have the sincerity produced out of it.

When restraint is abandoned, the LP becomes thrilling in a different way. On the title track—a stunner in perpetual acceleration—rhythms jabber in swirls of chaos before building to a cacophonous drone. The track overstimulates to the point of causing a shutdown; all you can do is listen in awe. Signifiers of meaning are set aside for a pure experiential ride. It’s in these hyper-symbolic spaces that My Enemy, My Love really excels; the areas of ourselves which, no matter where in the world we’re from, wait in blind apprehension for our touch.

 My Enemy, My Love is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe