Paul de Jong
's second solo album since the breakup of the beloved collage-pop duo
the Books
is a challenging, cathartic therapy session channeling years of frustration, alienation, confusion, and abuse. The sense of playfulness which was prominent in his earlier work is largely transformed into pitch-black humor, and during some moments, it expresses outright terror. As if the title doesn't tip it off already, there is a whole lot of cursing on this album. Not on every track, mind you, but the ones that do indulge in FCC-unfriendlies tend to go overboard. On tracks like the brief prog-metal thrasher "The Wind," the vocals are chopped up finely enough to resemble fast-forwarding compact discs, so it's not easy to discern what's being said anyway. Much more direct and confrontational is the downright disturbing "Breaking Up," which contains seven minutes of a woman shrieking obscenities and accusations over sparse, stark guitar plucking. There's also the glitch-folk title track, which alternates the lyrics of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" with an F-bomb-filled chorus, a juxtaposition of the innocent and the filthy reminiscent of
Kimya Dawson
. On the album's busiest tracks,
de Jong
's arrangements are as vivid and complex as ever, twisting colorful melodies and frenetic, choppy drumming into tightly wound, rapidly spinning audio constructions. On the flipside of these intense expressions of pent-up aggression and stress, there are minimalist pieces such as the dark ambient meditation "Pipe Dream" or the shimmering eight-minute mallet percussion drone "Wavehoven." It's easy to recognize how this album can be viewed as a reaction to years of accumulated personal issues and traumas, and it's powerful on a certain level, but on the whole, it's just not very easy to listen to or enjoy. Of course, that seems like the entire point. ~ Paul Simpson