Who needs a revolution any way? A record of dualities- fragilities and motoriks, births and deaths, acceptances and resistances, passions and detachedness, tears and joys. Not as frantic as they were, nor as dusty as they became, it's floatier, heavier, and more straightforward than anyone expected, its fans pointing out its subtleties, its critics calling it 'good' and that's all. My favourite is the first track 'cause it's all 'how many dualities can we fit into a song'- it's called Ohm which is electrical resistance, but as a homophone brings to mind the sacred om chanted by the river in Hesse's Siddhartha, the former being resistance, the latter being constant flow, the song ending in the victory of distortion (the electric), chaos, and impermanence. A dislocation occurs in the language of the song as the recurring sign of resisting the flow seems more and more at odds with the music's direction (the victory of distortion, chaos, impermanence), until it becomes clear that the band have either created an ironic mantra (they couldn't sound happier doing the opposite of resisting), or have painted the image of trying and failing to rise above the inevitability of time passing.
Either way it's an existential bummer, but in my opinion it's also one of the band's better records (for all their celebrated frantic-ness, the dustiness employed for equilibrium or record geek geekiness always bored me). C'mon 2013, let's do more of this!
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