by Taylor Ruckle (@taylorruckle)
As a sort of self-titled album, With a Y slots comfortably into Telyscopes’ discography. No, it doesn’t offer anything as plainly hooky as the standout tracks from the Philadelphia-based experimentalists’ last few records. It’s more consistent and robust, especially in balancing the weirder side of the coin--ever in pursuit of wilder textures and song structures, dotted with fire alarms, EKG samples, and improvised percussion. It’s always been there, but With a Y wields Telyscopes’ eccentricity with newfound ease and self-assurance.
First, some context. Singer/songwriter/producer Jack Hubbell set up the last two full-length Telyscopes albums as opposing mirror images; Perfume as an exercise in polish, and then Mata Mata as raw, unleashed id. It was an interesting concept, and there were big successes on both ends of the spectrum, but it also doomed itself in the execution. Mata Mata exists to answer its predecessor, and too often, it feels obligatory. It stops just short of enjoying its unhinged potential, where Perfume has an easier time getting the most out of its own extremes.
With a Y brings both sides under one roof, less conceptual and more lived-in. To that end, Hubbell juggles lots of contrasting instrumental parts--most impressively on “Sunshine, be GoNE gOnE GONe!” where a seizure of sampled drums stops dead in its tracks, giving way to a smooth midsection full of gorgeous horns and keys. It’s slick, but not seamless; the seams are the point, as in the intro to “Cicada Buzz,” where you can peek through the stitches to catch a click track and a big inhale from Hubbell before he launches into a harmonious insectoid spiel.
Lyrically, it’s a record of equally rich juxtapositions--beauty and ugliness, growth and rot--taking place at weddings, funerals, and on bathroom floors. Decay is everywhere, gut-wrenchingly literal in the gross-out humor of “Rotten Egg,” twisted and surreal in the monochrome kaleidoscope of “Rat-Catcher (591).” When it’s personal, it’s more direct than ever, as on “Syncope,” where a lightheaded Hubbell ruminates on faith in waking up from a fainting episode. When it’s abstract, it’s calmly nightmarish, as in “Flaming June (With All Her Cousins),” a grim marriage dreamscape attended by the personified Death, Sleep, and Forgetting.
Everything builds to a double finale that epitomizes each of the record’s poles. “(Like a Crayfish) The Moon (XVIII)” is by far the album’s oddest turn: a reeling, folk-operatic freakout that stretches the upper and lower bounds of Hubbell’s vocal range. It only gets more perfectly off-kilter as it unfolds, and he commits to the bit with wholehearted gusto, selling every syllable with a deliciously strange kind of soul.
An outro joins it to Hubbell’s lovingly elevated cover of “On My Side, On a Hillside,” the record’s most conventionally beautiful track. The song was originally recorded by One’s A Crowd, the solo project of Seth Flynn (lead singer and guitarist of The Duskwhales). Hubbell’s rendition pays tribute to his origins in the Northern Virginia DIY scene, but it’s also just an exquisite reimagining. He replaces the acoustic guitar with lush, flowing piano and an orchestra of other parts that draw out the wistful spirit of the song--and the depth of feeling behind Hubbell’s experimental outbursts.
With a Y is abuzz with ideas, and you get the feeling Hubbell is following where they lead, picking up and putting down melodies and refrains as it suits them instead of trying to fit them into a box. In any case, it makes for a thorough cross-section of his tremendous range, both as a songwriter and an exacting architect of arrangements. Not every track ranks among Telyscopes’ all-time best, but as a cohesive whole, it boasts gobs of personality and production wizardry that just isn’t quite like anything else out there.