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Slender - "Time on Earth" | Album Review

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by Leah B. Levinson (@littlest_b_)

The unconventional jangle-punk quartet follow up what seemed to be a one-off debut (Walled Garden, 2017) with an expansive full-length, opening up the Slender universe. Time On Earth rings out like a prequel, an origin story for the mysterious character and quality that textured their former release. With guitar, drums, bass, synth, sequencing, collage, and psychedelic vocals the band buries their heads deeper, stretching necks down and following the endless roots of their walled garden. It’s an existential project, illuminating the immediate with psychedelic effect and drawing attention to the materiality of daily life, pulling present.

Listening, I imagine the earliest men: wandering out to hunt or forage; settling disputes with club, rock, and stone; falling to the ground with skull cracked open, blood seeping deep in the dirt, losing contact with surroundings and knowing all cosmic significance was ending then, there. When his skull was split the universe ended. Our world has expanded since then, we are aware of things which do not and may not ever relate to our bodies. A denial of this awareness may be a point of retreat to the primitive, the immediate.

The moshpit is a regressive, pagan ritual giving testament to the cathartic energy that flows within music. Following this, in some scenes, there lies a predilection towards displaying the rocks one has for brains. It’s an admiration of the simple, dumbing down and busting open, an aesthetic that belies a faith in anarcho-primitivism or the mystic. As a part of this, Slender crafts futurist rock with brutalist clarity. La Vida Es Un Mus, this release's label, refers to the label’s music as "primitive world musik." Stupid songs, stupid lyrics, stupid sounds, and stupid rhythm dressed up to ascend. This in search of existential knowledge by material means. Strip it all away and all we've got is our stupid head in our stupid body, our stupid fears and feelings and pleasures.

The track list outlines a descent—cultural, social, mental, physical, spiritual, intellectual, hard to say—and it's pretty well-articulated musically, shaping the record dramatically if simply. From the wake-up alarm of “The Day Begins When You Get Down,” through the tiresome rambling meander of “New Country,” to the darkened triptych of “So,” “Far,” and “Down,” Slender crafts a journey that relies little on tropes of scoring. Essentially, it’s all new parts.

As with their debut EP Walled Garden, the production leans towards collapses of space, incongruent uses of reverb and compression between instruments, the foundation of a groove suddenly collapsing or pulling out, thinning (as at the end of the album’s opener). It's the invention of a non-space which is at once crystal clear and smoky. It’s a flowerbed of sounds, springing up from other worlds where acoustics move differently. The novelty here is the simplicity of the source material: jangly, a few chords, spoken texts, uncomplicated. It's a surreal sort of brutalism that remains light to the touch, reminiscent of the rough-cut collage that makes up The Beach Boys’ epic flop Smiley Smile.

Slender are spiritual descendants in the tradition of Velvet Underground, executing rightly, pillaging desperation-brains for truth when their heads are aching. Scratching at the bottom of the cranial barrel for a productive illusion. Unamplified electric guitar strings sound out like desperate grabs at ASMR tingles. Crunching and room sounds abound, creating a distorted and blurry image of a band in nowhere. Meanwhile, overdriven synths are plucked percussively, bringing up Devo via Macula Dog. "Sleep of Trees" strips itself away and recombines its parts to build towards an apex while maintaining a cool staticity. Shoegaze vocals come without the wash of sound to back them up, echoing cuts off of Dean Blunt's Black Metal. Overblown everything and then very little, dry and clean. Even speedcore drums turn up here and there ("Down" in particular is a past-punk spiritual cleansing made up of them).

The result is a cool album, ancient and new, fundamental and inventive, with plenty of enticing interludes binding it into a cohesive whole. Perhaps it provides some art-rock fodder for your upcoming picnic playlist or it narrates your next trip to outer zones. Either way, it’s a well-received release.