Spectreview: Black Dresses – Forever in Your Heart

Black Dresses make a strong surprise return in the nihilistic revelry of Forever In Your Heart.

Released: February 14, 2021

Noise Pop
(Industrial)
(Alternative)

-DARK ORANGE-

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“Can we make something beautiful with NO hope?“

If you’re confused, or even incensed, about Black Dresses putting out a record months after their breakup, chances are you’re missing something crucial.

Since their debut four years ago, Black Dresses have lived in impossible spaces. Their songs oscillate, whiplash-like, between euphoria and dysphoria. Star-bound choruses cohabitate with rock bottom breakdowns. Voices rumble underneath, threatening to explode; when they do it’s simultaneously marvelous than horrifying, an aural crack of bone and blood that puts the screamo of the 2000s to performative shame.

Devi McCallion and Ada Rook don’t just let the traumas of their individual pasts inform their art; they revel in it. In that sense they straddle the line between artistic license and unflinching reality, the space that a steadily growing number of us exist in. They’ve been doing this since WASTEISOLATION: laying down, for all to experience, the impossible space between hopelessness and resilience that women (and trans women in particular) have navigated forever. Sure, there’s universal appeal in how effectively they illustrate the existential nightmare that living in the Information Age entails, but Black Dresses’ power comes as much from their specificity as their overall sound. Like noise pop itself, they’re a niche act that’s paradox personified.

Releasing a new record after the supposed end of the line might feel like a cop-out, if you really care about that sort of thing. It could also feel like the most Black Dresses thing to do. Self-protection or canny marketing tactic aside, why should making music be confined to a Wikipedia timeline, especially when the rules are being rewritten every day?

What’s more important is that, as Phil Elverum pointed out so effectively last year, a name carries a lot of weight. And if you’re going to capitalize on a return to the Black Dresses name, it better be as effective as Forever In Your Heart, which takes everything the duo is known for and cranks up the production value to unprecedented levels. It’s an ideal entrance for FOMO-ridden newcomers who have yet to experience the unique force of a Black Dresses record.

Fittingly, Forever In Your Heart is front-loaded, its first four tracks quite possibly the strongest run of songs McCallion and Rook have released on record. “PEACESIGN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” puts to the pedal to the metal immediately, fusing an atonal nü-metal riff with a verse that shimmers like the Northern Lights. The momentum refuses to let up through the industrial fireworks of “Concrete Bubble” and the rumbling “Bulldozer,” the latter of which sees Ada Rook hits an irresistibly menacing aura on the chorus, as if “Apistat Commander” were an outtake from Bangerz. The rest of the record doesn’t quite hit that ridiculous high, but its altitude remains mostly constant, with disparate highlights in the discordant, anthemic “Waiting42moro” and the atomic, DnB-like “Perfect Teeth”

While Black Dresses don’t deviate much from what they succeeded at on their previous works (aside from an overwhelming focus on nihilism, likely due to the events of the past year), it’s the production that makes this record feel like a potential breakthrough. Its only tiny touches, but the harder parts seem to hit even harder, while the vocal processing and drum progressions are even more creative. Listen to the beachside scene “(Can’t) Keep It Together)” simulates in its pre-chorus just from blips alone, or how a song like “Zero Ultra” starts one way and takes a trip both unpredictable and natural to its mood. Through sheer practice, McCallion and Rook are getting to be better songwriters and better producers in every release.

Forever In Your Heart could define the Black Dresses project, or it could stand as a strange footnote in a soon-to-be definite component of the recent hyperpop explosion. Either way, it’s gratifying just to see two of the most powerful new voices in the genre continue to skirt conventions and defy expectations, as we should expect them to.

Recommended for bad days.