![feb20_03_[kingkrule].jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a85f41eccc5c5e40df9daf7/1586211469855-PBZ0G9G3WOEP5N5UD9XB/feb20_03_%5Bkingkrule%5D.jpg)
February 21, 2020 - True Panther Sounds
King Krule has come to us with his thoughts, seemingly broken apart in a psychedelic fit titled Man Alive!. Given the sparse, deconstructed nature of the album, the title reads like a rip of the good shit—a nod to the experimentalists, the heroin junkies’ in the circles of Miles Davis and peers. Man Alive! has the consistency of floating material—a preformed planet, gravity having not completed its slow cohesive work. Featuring facets of late 90s and early 2000s indie, psych rock, free verse jazz, and unversed trip hop, King Krule’s latest album meditates on distilled elements of genre, not necessarily pieced together, but pushed into a small space; “an album,” they call it. Eventually, it does all make sense, just not in the way a normal listener wants it to.
Much of Man Alive! rummages for parts. ‘Cellular,’ the first track, leans into the indie heap for its open, and quickly switches to glitzy industrial material. The lyrics are delivered brusquely and without melody. It’s a broad gap from Archy Marshall’s more cohesive work. His sparseness and hallmark baritone hold the listener to his or her fandom. Guitars slow, pick up a beachy redolent twang, synths turn to sirens and well and then sparkle again. A sensual saxophone escorts us out.
‘Supermarche’ has decidedly psychedelic-grunge upbringing. The guitars are flimsy. Dutifully so. The lyrics are sickly. The drums fade consistently into false ghost notes. King Krule screams “Let Go” with a lot of reverb, his voice increasingly raspy. The lyrics feature these words: “bleeding,” “brains,” “cats,” “dogs,” “a fish,” “eyes,” “sacrifice,” “young children with shields.” In the end Marshall screams, “we have to rise above,” and then a bit of studio chatter says, “nah man fuck all that.” That’s it.
This is the mood. It’s decentralized. It’s a come down remembering a come up, an effort to selectively piece the world back together. It doesn’t work because there is no selecting the pieces. Elements of song are clothes-pinned on a tenuous wire. Does it hold up? Well, the songs have a beginning and an end. Here’s the catch: the tenuous wire is in space; it doesn’t have to “hold up.” These are the first two songs, and they blazon the premise of the album. There are exceptions, but the next track is not one of them.
‘Stoned Again,’ is the third track and is probably the song closest related to Lincoln Park’s discography. Another deceptively gentle opening of low horn and sugary nostalgia guitars pluck us into a false sense of security. Next thing you know, insidious crispy drums pair up with low growling synths to stage Marshall’s slow chuckling rap chronicle of his life in a park, where he mostly does stoner shit: think thoughts, see yuppies, see yobs, remember a puppy, scratch a lottery ticket. Angst doesn’t feel like the right word, but it’s part of the right word. Maybe anger and relief-seeking are the other parts of the right word.
‘Comet Face’ rehashes the dysphoric park relationship in Peckham Rye specifically, finding deeper reaching structures to hold the track’ together. The song takes a more straightforward approach, finding narrative arc in the singer’s chronic loss of time and consciousness. The guitars are rhythmic, the drums are unassuming, the bass climbs and falls –and then a horn screams. That’s a nice moment. This horn really goes off. It trills. Fleeting crescendos build tension out of noise.
‘The Dream’ features the first glint of poignancy in lyricism. A slow mournful, mostly vacuous song. ‘The Dream’ seems to reckon what the previous tracks were juggling a bit helplessly. Not to be without dischord, this track does devolve into dissonant piano scales while Marshall repeats “the dream” over and over again. But in its earliest stages offers the first clear-sighted dilemma, “I wasn’t sure at all why our love/Becomes sorrow when we’re this free.” It’s a welcome departure from the bleak “headiness” of the album into something heartfelt and stirring.
There is a reason to clamor your way through the five songs of the album. ‘The Dream’ is a turning point. We’re no longer scavenging through refuse, observing scattered material. A planet is forming. A gas giant. But, good news: it’s habitable. Better news: it’s palatable. King Krule and his team of producers and collaborators are finding their vectors here. They’re establishing a moody world. Still, Marshall does not find the peak of lyricism here. There are no mountains, also no valleys. The mind behind it all is coming back together, reassembling.
From this point forward the album reclaims the mystique for which King Krule is well-acclaimed. The only gripe to be had is that he’s put out an album with lyrics at its center, as its heart, and yet the lyrics have such a faint pulse, are not the molten core required. But if you, like I, are willing to let the vocals be an instrument, an incident of which is the uncanny resemblance to words, then you have yourself an album that successfully amalgamates jazz particles, blues moods, soul, indie rock, and rarified air somehow audibly transmitted in King Krule’s best efforts. ⛰️