Mount Kimbie – The Sunset Violent
Warp
It’s a remarkably confounding expertise when nature’s magnificence turns into warped by the context of private life tragedies.
“Dumb Guitar,” the primary single from Mount Kimbie’s new album, The Sunset Violent, illustrates a pair drowning of their relationship and looking for protected, shallow water whereas on trip at a fictional seashore resort someplace in China. “I watch the sundown violent,” Andrea Balency-Béarn sings calmly. “Lose all of it in silence / Dig a gap in my thoughts / There’s one thing on this island / That’s holding me off-balance.”
Pure magnificence turns into tarnished by heartbreak, despair, and identification crises. Buzzy synths start anxiously reserved, however then quickly conflict in opposition to intense, bloody piano and blown-out guitars. Issues get blurry; the waves crash. Mount Kimbie use nature’s routine to compound saturnine feelings.
With 2017’s Love What Survives, Dom Maker and Kai Campos were expanding Mount Kimbie as “a regular band,” bringing in additional artistic minds to make clear their sound. On its follow-up, they solidified that enlargement as a free post-punk group with newly minted full-time members Balency-Béarn and Marc Pell. Whereas the previous felt lustrous, large, and magnetically alien, The Sunset Violent feels extra desolate and unnerving.
Most tracks attain a near-tumultuous climax earlier than tapering off. The propulsive fuzz of Sonic Youth and the Fall are felt on highlights “Yukka Tree” and “A Determine In The Surf.” Elsewhere, frequent collaborator Archy Marshall (King Krule) returns to cushion the album with overcast romanticism. The guitars sound corroded and the drums really feel paper skinny, all whereas Mount Kimbie confront us with vignettes that includes intimacy-hungry characters that battle a present of loneliness and isolation.
“I really feel connection exterior,” goes one line on “Fishbrain.” The exterior is bedlam: “The state’s on fireplace / The freeways, they sway and collapse / Individuals disguise, clouds cry.” Mount Kimbie are letting their songs smolder into life’s discontent. That uncomfortable pressure is The Sunset Violent’s magnificence. – GRADE: B
You possibly can try The Sunset Violent at Bandcamp and elsewhere.
Extra from Spin:
- Mount Kimbie – “Turtle Neck Man” (ft. King Krule)
- Mount Kimbie Announce New Album Love What Survives, Release “Blue Train Lines”
- Mount Kimbie and King Krule Get Psych-Rap Makeover From Oneman and Jeremiah Jae
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