Ask Me This
Alcoholic Faith
Mission
Alarm Music.
SCQ Rating: 78%
It has become
something of an institution for Alcoholic Faith Mission to issue a release in
the springtime. 421 Wythe Avenue, Let This Be the Last Night We Care as well as
2011’s And the Running With Insanity EP each blossomed onto the scene at
winter’s end and resonate as though they are unburdening the cares collected
the previous year.
Ask Me This,
however, wastes no time in presenting a change of season we weren’t expecting.
Opening track “Down From Here” sets the tone via an impassioned group a cappella,
building in bombast but remaining rigidly sober, before “Alaska” finds an
almost industrial crunch replacing the typical warmth of this Copenhagen-based
sextet. Ask Me This could’ve been considered a departure on the basis of sonic
tinkering alone but that merely accentuates the tonal shift: that on these ten
songs, Alcoholic Faith Mission are holding their burden tightly, consumed with
and fueled by the conflicted emotions they once sought to emancipate. The sunny
disposition of “Running With Insanity”, which owned the headliner spot on last
year’s EP, only gradually feels at home here on account of its painstaking
layered arrangement, as breathless harmonica, handclaps and vocal harmonies
form the song’s foundation (whereas guitar and piano get relegated to the
status of happy accessories).
Which brings me to
my next point: Alcoholic Faith Mission’s break-neck speed of releasing material
can only be outshone by their evolving song-craft, which undergoes another
upgrade on Ask Me This. Whether it’s the spliced symphonics on “Reconstruct My
Love” or the stuttering drum machine on “Into Pieces” that sound so alien to ‘aFm’
loyalists, repeated listens find those experimental qualities being absorbed
into the same emotional vein that rendered past records so magnificent. In
particular, “I’m Not Evil” likely stands as one of the band’s best tracks yet;
its cascading piano line latched to a subtly rendered bass and percussion
shuffle.
Small efforts truly
make Ask Me This a more nuanced animal than its predecessors, even if the end
results fail to shine quite as brightly. Saying this new record gets personal
wouldn’t really explain much, given some of the band’s previous talking-points,
but one could definitely call it insular. And that pervasive overcast succeeds
in shedding strange new light on a disciplined band transforming before our very ears.
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