Spectreview: black midi – Schlagenheim

-LIGHT GREEN-

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“Years ago they tried to cut me with a chainsaw
All I had was pen and a crayon, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba
I drowned my own son in a cold river
Jammed my head in a generator, ba-ba-ba”

black midi, a London-based experimental rock band, are well-versed (masters, arguably) of a style of music that long ago threatened to rule the airwaves but is now largely relegated to the Youtube histories of six-string bassists and wearers of Dream Theater apparel. The band aims to make a mark in today’s comparatively staid, mellowed indie rock scene with their debut album on Rough Trade, and based on what they’ve delivered it’s very possible they might actually succeed. Schlagenheim (which loosely translates to “hit home” in German) changes shape like liquid mercury, often within the same song, bounding between deliciously acerbic post-punk ala Drahla (“953”), elegantly imperial prog folk (also “953”), tense stoner metal (“bmbmbm”), menacing Rapture-esque dance-punk (“Of Schlagenheim”), and even dusty alt-country (eight-minute epic “Western”). Every player is a star, the brightest being drummer Morgan Simpson, who rides the downbeat like a rogue wave, stretching time and fitting rolls in tight places in ways that color every song in unique shades (imagine how “Speedway” would sound without that dynamic polyrhythm, or how much more by-the-numbers “953’s” chorus would sound without that extra beat before the crash).

Anchoring the album’s disparate styles together is lead singer Geordie Greep, whose speaks and sings his lyrics in an elastic warble that’s bound to be divisive. It’s a curious choice, singing to near-unintelligibility (it’s the kind of style that practically requires a lyric sheet), but while his words do vary wildly between tiers of coherence it allows the music to be the center of attention, which is for the best when the band is working at this level. Additionally, it’s worth it to know what’s being sung; characters in Greep’s songs live in madness and speak in tongues, wrecked by the trauma of sexual abuse (“Ducter”), broken justice systems (“Years Ago”), the illusion of perfection in packaged entertainment (“Of Schlagenheim”) and, quite possibly, monomania (the terrifying “bmbmbm”). The album’s most lucid moment comes when Greep shifts from the personal to the political, railing poignantly against the continuous water crisis in Flint on the explosive “Near DT, MI.” It’s a song that throws the album’s vortex into a cruelly real light, a two-and-a-half minute crisis that “hits home” the way an album called Schlagenheim ought to. It’s indulgent at times and leans very closely off the cliff into pretentiousness, but overall black midi seem to have delivered on the promise they showed back when they were introduced to the world.

Recommended for those looking for something different, whatever that may be.