ADULT.
"A
good friend of ours said after hearing an advance copy of this record
that ADULT. used to sit on the sidelines and critique the
idiosyncrasies of culture, but now we are on the inside, sending our
message out." So says Adam Lee Miller of The Way Things Fall,
ADULT.'s fifth album and a record that genuinely deserves the
oft-abused music industry epithet "long-awaited." Miller pauses before
adding wryly, "We agree." The Way Things Fall is an album
that looked like it might never happen, because since the release of
Miller and his partner Nicola Kuperus' last record — 2007's Why Bother? —
the duo have been largely absent from the world of music. "After a long
world tour, we totally burnt out," Miller relates. "We decided we
wanted to do something completely different." That something was a
trilogy of films entitled the Three Grace(s) triptych, completed in
2010, along with a variety of other pursuits, including managing a
major commercial building renovation and working on their visual art
projects.
When
Miller and Kuperus re-entered the studio in 2012, there was no
intention of making another album — they planned to record a 12"
containing two new songs they'd written in 2012 for their return to
live performance at the Detroit Museum of Contemporary Art. But it
turned out that the time away from music had recharged ADULT.'s
batteries, and then some. "We were apparently a dam that was ready to
break," says Kuperus. "We were writing frantically, as if in a frenzy."
The
result is a record that sounds both focused and coherent, flowing with
a conceptual ease. "[The album] flowed efficiently and agreeably for
us," says Miller. "We have never worked better together. We believe
this is because we exorcised all of our demons through our past
records, we have no baggage, we started anew. We left behind the
self-conscious adolescents." And indeed, ADULT. have never sounded so
self-assured, so poised, and so vital.
The
songs are some of the most memorable the band have recorded — Miller
describes them as "the closest we have to come to writing traditional
'pop' songs, even though we know they are totally mutants," and he's
right on both fronts. From the whiplash synth lines of the opening
"Heartbreak" to the ship's bell sample that closes the record, the
songs are full of the sort of memorably twisted melodies we've come to
expect from the band. Analogue sounds predominate, and notably, there's
no bass guitar at all: "This wasn't a conscious decision, but something
realized at the end of the process."
The
lyrics address issues that Kuperus describes as "personal and
universal," illustrating themes of relationship-related fear and doubt
with striking and occasionally surrealist imagery — "Nothing Lasts"
finds Kuperus claiming "I can see in to your mouth/ Down into your
throat/ Straight to your heart/ Tears me apart", while the somber "A
Day Like Forever" deploys images of time stretching and disappearing,
and "Tonight, We Fall" describes feelings as tangible objects that
"stick to you, stick to me." The contrast between the reflective
lyricism and the squelching analogue synth textures they inhabit
creates music that's both deeply heartfelt and viscerally thrilling,
something that's been a constant feature of ADULT.'s work over the
years.
|
Previous Press /
"Grim,
stripped-bare techno, razor-sharp synth-pop, and snarling
electro-punk...It's terrifically conceived and even more terrifically
crafted, the sort of record so perfect in its own aims that parsing out
influences or agendas seems a fool's game. These tracks, this duo, this
entity that is Adult.: they're a great and interesting thing, this
nation's best inducers of head-banging, high-speed driving, amazed
chuckles, and giddy bedroom shout." Pitchfork
"Itchy
gothic synthcore...Detroit's eeriest, scariest, plain witchiest
couple...Compressing the sound of gothic cathedral symphonics into the
frame of a stuttering, cobwebbed Casio, Millar ratchets up the disco
glitch into a ferociously minimal, hyper-tense techno rush." NME
"Sterile, synth-soaked productions." XLR8R
"Like
snorting Paxil-laced Adderall off a Fad Gadget lithograph, Adult. is
cathartic cabaret for the sketched out...The gnarled vignettes aim to
alienate, which only further endears core fans, whether electro heads,
electroclash survivors or no-wave fetishists. URB
|
The Way Things Fall Tracklisting /
01. Heartbreak
02. Idle (Second Thoughts) 03. Tonight We Fall 04. New Frustration 05. Love Lies 06. At The End Of It All 07. Nothing Lasts 08. A Day Like Forever 09. We Will Rest 10. Rise & Fall
Links /
Ghostly International |
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