Spectreview: black midi – Cavalcade

Released: May 28, 2021

Progressive Rock
(Avant-Prog)
(Jazz)
(Punk)
(Alternative)

-PEARL-

For a guide to the review color rating system, click here.

“Damn all us idiots
Damn us till death
Relentlessly trying to untie our knots of
Rivers and roads that defy all sense”

I’ve been thinking lately about ambient noise. Chances are, unless you live somewhere hilariously rural, you’re currently surrounded by it. Some of it is a necessary part of modern life: honking cars, wind and rain, barking dogs, distant raving and screaming. But a lot fit enters our lives by choice, either for distraction or for pleasure or to block out empty spaces. Phone speakers blown out, the imperceptible currents of electricity pulsing through the walls, the hum of lights, water running too long, background music. I run a big box fan to sleep.

Even in silence the brain persists: ever-thinking, over-stimulated, discerning patters and falling into habits; reading text and comments and opinions that rub against bone like sour tissue; putting up defenses and reconsidering viewpoints: momentarily learning, but more often than not reinforcing what it thinks it needs to know and bailing out the rest like a schooner taking on water. Life has become a twenty-four hour buffet; perhaps that’s why I go to bed every night nauseous. 

It could just as easily be my anxiety metastasizing, but black midi’s ambitious second LP sounds like life feels right now, to me. At first glance it feels like it’s saying something important, but I don’t think it is. Underneath the symphonic chaos and pretty passages is a collection of silly stories about cult leaders, chronic knee pain and writer’s block that dares to be interpreted as deadly serious. To me, the gravity comes from how it feels informed by the anxious insanity we’ve been drawn into. Far from the unique nature of the band’s now-signature marriage of jazz, prog and punk, this is as natural to my ears as folk, at least where it pertains to capturing contemporaneity honestly.

Cavalcade, first and foremost, is a technical marvel. That’s what we expect from the guys who made Schlagenheim, but there’s a whole new palette at work here. Never have the band produced something as romantic as the autumnal “Marlene Dietrich,” as grandiose as “Slow” or as literary as the closing epic of “Ascending Forth.” Despite the fact that their technical skill is in full force, a heightened sense of musicality reigns. Geordie Greep, Morgan Simpson, Cameron Picton and the rest never stop reminding you of their instrumental talents, even during the quiet parts, but that technicalness never subsumes Cavalcade’s bigger picture, which mixes Greep’s palatal incoherence with a peculiar poignancy.

You’d have to care about what black midi care about for it to resonate, though. Greep, as usual, pairs a freewheeling approach to the English language with his fish-faced delivery, making tracks like “Hogwash and Balderdash” (the only song here where I can clearly see the “King Crimson meets Primus” comparisons) and “Chondromalacia Patella” exercises in impressionism. Vague allusions to the power of Western populism pervade; references to Isabel Waidner’s Situationist masterpiece, The Blue Angel and, purportedly, composer Markus Reuter are peppered through the record like glyphs begging to be translated. Bassist Simpson prefers a simpler language on his tracks, which sit at the center of the album like its beating heart, but Greep’s inscrutable presence remains at the forefront, arguably keeping the band from being able to shake that big P-word.

That would be more of a problem were the record not a sheer joy to listen to. For all the dissonance, Cavalcade leans heavily into the band’s more mellifluous side while also showcasing – bewilderingly – an understanding of restraint. “Slow” ascends in a glorious fashion; “Diamond Stuff” pays its tense introductory minutes off with a gorgeous, shimmering outro that recalls Grizzly Bear’s similarly-insular “Cheerleader.” “Dethroned” may devolve into an almost unbearable clamor by its end, but the journey to get there, marked by moody saxophone and a streamlined guitar pattern, is impressively dynamic. I could argue opening proclamation “John L” is one of the weakest tracks here, but I get the sense that may be merely because it comes so early; Cavalcade, true to name, builds so effectively that its later tracks feel strengthened merely by their position.

Under that logic, “Ascending Forth” would be black midi’s strongest moment yet. It’s a little long and a little too inward – in that its double-entendre feels like a prickly defense of music that is unabashedly unconventional – but just like the album proper, it manages its build-up handily. It balances the uncomplicated beauty of the classical guitar with the grandeur of a string-led orchestra, rising and falling to match the capriciousness of Greep’s narrative. It could be an ode to the creative process that would neatly tie up a record weighty with left turns; it could just be a line of pretty moments capping an album full of them. It could just be noise. It could just be noise.

Highly recommended for the trumpeters.