Listening to the new double-album Drifters/Love is the Devil from Canadian artist Dirty Beaches aka Alex Zhang Hungtai feels rather like being trapped inside someone else’s mind; particularly someone who suffers from interchanging bouts of depression and dementia. Doused in the dreary gloom of a lo-fi, beachy garage sound that never seem to escape the four walls enclosing it, the album is an experimental spelunking expedition through forlorn, gritty, and minimalistic introspective terrain.
Songs like the title track “Love is the Devil” or “Berlin” demonstrate the cinematic, orchestral quality of the album, as haunting, slow tracks built upon gentle swells of modulated sound, all while remaining within the solitary confines of the lo-fi aesthetic. “Landscapes in the Mist” and “Greyhound at Night,” both two titles associated with lonesome travel, spell out disquiet murmurs with hazy garage textures, tapering percussion, and undulating saxophones. Stranger journeys abound in tracks like “Mirage,” which feels like a drug-demented stroll down the hallway of a mental institution, or in “Aurevoir Mon Visage,” with its primal Africana and foreign tongues.
Less burdened moods surface in “Casino Lisboa,” as it maneuvers through a heavy bass groove, cool percussive pick-ups, warbling organ and growling vocals. But that is as light-hearted as it gets, as a moody “Elli” takes the stage with eighties vibes and breathless vocal utters. Most of the remainder of tracks are experimental fragments of moods captured through unusual instrumentation that sometimes build frighteningly, unnervingly, and even occasionally beautifully. It can all be a little alienating and unapproachable, as the music gives no leeway to those not comfortable with its unusual, under-produced sound. But it works well as an expression of a mind, of a sadness, of those inexpressible and uncertain moods that sometimes traverse our consciousness.
