Lesser Evil
Doldrums
Arbutus Records
Listening to Doldrums can be disorienting. Physically disorienting.
When I sat down and listened to Lesser Evil, the Montreal-based electro-pop (if you can call it that) artist’s debut, I had trouble finding out how to approach the music.
The album is crafted entirely by Airick Woodhead, a friend and musical affiliate to Grimes, one of my favourite artists at the moment.
It carves out its sound using tribal drums that could plausibly be hijacked from The Lion King soundtrack and Aphex Twin-style glitch freakouts. Even through this description, it is hard to convey what makes this album so enigmatic.
Woodhead precisely moves his songs in the direction he intends, hurdling over pop tropes and obscuring his melodies with clusters of synths and pummeling drums. This sound could easily become grating or cluttered, and many listeners will likely find this the case.
Tracks such as “Egypt” bury infectious melodies in loops and samples. At first I found this unappealing, but the song grew on me.
In a way, this is Doldrums’ greatest talent: obscuring and even obliterating elements of pop that other bands would emphasize. Woodhead’s vocal performance is another tremendous feature of the album.
The singing on album highlight “She is the Wave” sounds almost identical to Björk at times, although the vocals become more manic than Björk ever is in her songs.
I love when a singer pushes themselves to their breaking point, and then beyond it, and Woodhead has an excellent knack for it.
If anything on the album bothered me, it would have been that the last few tracks lack the energy of the front end of the album. The vocals are toned down, and even the noisier end of the production seems a little too repetitive and low-key.
All around, Lesser Evil is a very solid debut from an artist that I would love to see more from.
