Preoccupations Enter Post-Punk Nostalgia With ‘New Material’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

[rating=7.00]

Preoccupations are the sound of deep longing in more ways than one. Their music and lyrics are the clear exhibition of that as it captures the prowling unrest inherent in the post-punk movement of the late 70s, but therein lies their deeper sense of longing. The band let slip glimpses of a deep wish to be back there and to be part of that movement. A lingering air of disappointment that their time to bury themselves in layers of discontent has come at a point when it doesn’t feel part of a grand new frontier, even as it hearkens in tribute to those pathways forged thirty years ago. This is less ‘post-punk revival’ and more ‘post-punk nostalgia’ with the lo-fi echoes of its instrumentation and distant drone of frontman Matt Flegel’s vocals. That being said, they still need to write their songs and play their music, and New Material gives them genuine scope to plant their flag as a band genuinely out of their time and not just a tribute act.

And boy, that post-punk radical flag is carried proud and true throughout this new record. Three albums into their career and this feels like genuine progress for what the band want to be and what they wish to convey. This is a band who write deeply anxious songs about the establishment and personal spirals of desolation before flipping the proverbial bird at the mass markets of the music industry and calling their album New Material. Such a flippant title belies the depth of the darkness here. The track list reads like a Web MD symptom list for manic depression, titles like ‘Decompose’, ‘Disarray’, ‘Doubt’ and ‘Antidote’ sandwiching dystopian inferences of ‘Espionage’, ‘Manipulation’ and ‘Compliance’. These are anxiety ridden tracks that burrow into your consciousness, lingering and stirring up the paranoia that Flegel mulls over.

It starts with the clattering distant rhythm of ‘Espionage’ that’s gradually colored in with a vaporous synth line; Flegel almost barking his fears of “shreds of doubt sinking all the way down”. ‘Disarray’, one of the record’s early standouts, makes good on its Joy Division roots with a Sumner inspired recurring guitar line ringing brightly throughout; piercing the echoes of a repeated “disarray, disarray, disarray” that gradually becomes indistinguishable with the wash of reverb and perfectly reflects the beautiful chaos they meticulously craft. It’s forlorn music, no doubt, but by Flegel’s own admission it’s also “somehow the most uptempo thing they’ve ever done.” There’s an energy that feels deeply personal in these songs that hasn’t been there before, as though the band are feeling their own connection to the futility they espouse – and in turn creating a vaguely hopeful undercurrent. ‘Antidote’ has a wonderful Talking Heads quality with its stuttering beats and almost spoken work verses ranting of establishment led narcissism; while ‘Solace’ reflects the manner in which its name works as counterpart to ‘Disarray’, its surging pop riffage and glittering synths giving the chaos a sense of purpose.

“No, we don’t want this anymore,” Flegel repeats on ‘Solace’. Lines like this are what give New Material the light that saves it from its own darkness and makes it feel sincere. Assembled with interspersed professions like “change is everything” on ‘Espionage’, they provide a subtle counterpoint to the relentless doom encapsulated in lines like ‘Manipulation’s “please don’t remember me like I’ll always remember you.” A sense that the band are, if not yet working through their psychosis, at least beginning to recognize it. It’s this pervasive tension that makes closer ‘Compliance’ such a fulfillment. A five minute droning instrumental of surging feedback and siren-like synths – the shoe-gaze quality feeling like something My Bloody Valentine or early M83 may have done – it feels like a true expression of where Preoccupations are. “For better or worse we are cursed in the ways that we tend to be”, Flegel sings on ‘Decompose’. That deep sense of longing and disaffection may persist and dominate their music, but Preoccupations are at least starting to come to terms with the hand they’ve been dealt.