With and without
Matmos
,
Drew Daniel
was on a creative roll in the late 2010s and early 2020s. His work as
the Soft Pink Truth
was especially rewarding: with 2020's acclaimed
Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase?
, he took the project's disco obsession to transcendent heights, tapping into the communal ecstasy of dance music at a time when its healing powers were sorely needed.
Daniel
explores a similarly elegant and experimental space on that album's follow-up,
Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This?
Named for a question asked during a friend's DJ set,
's tracks provide possible answers with their effortlessly wide-ranging sounds and moods. His willingness to defy easy classification and his skill at carrying listeners through high-concept, deftly shifting pieces are both on display on the record's 11-minute opening salvo "Deeper." Bookended by droning organs, the track lives up to its name, encompassing sultry flutes and saxophones, lush guitars, zigzagging strings, and cosmic synths that reveal more and more layers as they revolve around the beat in a mesmerizing clockwork. At times, the album comes closer to more expected dance floor fare than
Sinning
did, providing some of the brightest highlights along the way. On "La Joie Devant la Mort" ("the joy before death"),
and
Xiu Xiu
's
Jamie Stewart
craft dramatic, profoundly queer disco that blurs the lines between horror, glamour, sex, and death while crickets chirp in time with the beat. Longtime collaborator
Jenn Wasner
returns on "Wanna Know," which casts a pensive yet driving mood that underscores the equal importance of thinking and moving in the
Soft Pink Truth
's music. Named for a pioneering San Francisco discotheque, "Trocadero" is a breathtaking mood piece that begins as a foggy, glittering impression of a club at its peak and ends on the beach at dawn.
's finesse at musical world-building also shines on the aptly named "Moodswing," which moves from elation to introspection via luxurious strings and
Nate Wooley
's trumpet, and on "Joybreath," a shadowy, erotic track that, like "La Joie Devant la Mort," uses the text of French philosopher/erotica author
Georges Bataille
as a jumping-off point. As
Deeper
unfolds,
goes further into
's experimentation, casting an even wider musical net that ranges from the heady minimalism of "Sunwash" to the sexy deep house of "Deeper Than This." Though this makes for a slightly less unified listening experience, it also allows for lighthearted moments like "Toot Sweet"'s funky, loose-limbed workout and "Now That It's All Over," a joyous reworking of
Willie Hutch
's 1973 soul ballad that spans pedal steel, bongos, harp, and more without ever sounding overworked. While it doesn't always reach
's heights, the deeper sexuality, deeper grooves, and deeper understanding
seeks and finds on
make it a triumph in its own right. ~ Heather Phares