by Shilpa Saravanan, opinions editor
California-based Warpaint’s self-titled second studio album is otherworldly. It’s also out of this world.
Warpaint conjures up images of everything alien, from ethereal beings drifting through the galaxy to robots going clubbing in a 1970s discotheque. The appropriately titled “Intro” introduces the main players throughout the album: a forward-moving drumbeat, a pulsing bass line and a high-pitched, airy female vocal that floats above the others. (Such a vocal done by another artist might be described as “atmospheric,” but Warpaint floats beyond and into outer space.) The drum kit, bass and vocals continue in this manner through half of the album; each track is unique, but the listener might be forgiven for growing bored after five different iterations of “ahhhhh ahhhhh ahhhhh” and similarly unintelligible lyrics.
No matter: track six, “Teese,” offers you a glimpse of the change in store with a vaguely Caribbean backbeat–a glimpse, that is, of track seven, “Disco//Very,” which explodes with hysterical synths and an aggressively Daft Punk-esque sound. Warpaint returns to its initial formula of drum kit + bass + vocals after that turn, but the music moves away from both the pseudo-techno of “Disco//Very” and returns to the careful distance of “Intro.”
“Drive,” the penultimate track, moves into the realm of vocals that don’t take multiple listens to understand and contains random and curiously familiar percussive noises (as opposed to the drum kit that drives the majority of the album). The last track, “Son,” is the first to incorporate the piano as a major instrument–all ethereal, alien pretense is gone. For the first time on the album, the vocals contain expression. They’re plaintive, pleading, human.
Overall: Warpaint keeps the listener on their toes, as each track is just different enough to sustain interest. All but the last come together to create a futuristic, Spartan soundscape. Though the album’s minimalism works well, the aforementioned last song, by contrast, is the gem–the only human in a strange land.
