by Benji Heywood (@benjiheywood)
How was your pandemic? While uniformly terrible for nearly all of us, there was a small subset of humans who made the proverbial lemonade. These are the artists whose art requires great care to craft it. The pandemic transformed them from part-time service industry grunts and misanthropic gig economists to full-time creators, allowing them the hours and physical distance to make shit that would have otherwise demanded a scope unattainable for those balancing paying the rent with making the work.
Blessed’s new album Circuitous feels like that type of artwork, one whose construction is deliberate and masterful, without ever sounding forced or overwrought. It’s an album of patience, of geological time, of tension and eruption, of painstaking sonic architecture. This type of attention to detail is not new ground for the band, per se. 2019’s Salt was a document of a live band at the height of its powers but listening to it never felt as if you were hearing something off-the-cuff. Blessed’s music may be the product of perpetually jamming in a room, but their finishing is all editorial. The songs sounded orchestrated, nuanced, with twin guitars, bass, drums, and the occasional synth interlocking to form a shared synesthesia. Anyone lucky enough to catch Blessed on their relentless slog through North America can attest to this. The resulting shows were near-perfection, hive-mind collectivism that was simultaneously workmanlike and sublime.
Precision from chaos – it’s the goal of many who trade in the math-y post punk of bands like Blessed, but few do it better or with such aplomb. Yet where the magic of Salt was its hairpin exhilaration, Circuitous benefits from a newfound conservatism. That may sound like a bad thing but allow me to make the case. Consider the drumming of Jake Holmes. The drumming is often the linchpin of the best Blessed tunes, the engine propelling the band forward, from Salt highlight “Caribou” to the breathtakingly anxious “Centre” from their 2021 EP iii. Circuitous still provides tasty beats, but there’s a newfound prioritization of vibe over spectacle which allows the drumming to carry a certain girth, as if each strike of the skins was a perfectly syncopated hit of multiple drums sticks. Previously notable for playing atop the beat and pulling the band – guitarists Drew Riekman and Reuben Houweling plus bassist Mitchell Trainor – along, it’s the groove of songs like “Anything” and “Person” on Circuitous that makes these tunes satisfying in a way that feels innovative for the band.
That’s not to say the twitchiness or beauty of previous Blessed music has been left on the cutting room floor – far from it; Circuitous has these moments in droves. There’s no better place to start than with album opener “Redefine.” A lightly finger-plucked acoustic guitar matches an arpeggiated electric before the band kicks in with a head-bobbing groove in three. The harmonies are gorgeous and the start-stop accentuation of the line “place to act/place to speak” shines as an early earworm. The song benefits from a close-mic’d sonic palate more reminiscent of Nigel Godrich than Steve Albini (the album’s engineering by Matt Roach and Emily Ryan is top notch). It’s a welcome change, but its effectiveness can be credited to the song’s taut second half. Here, the tune simmers with a menace that never quiet boils over. It’s a good thing. Blessed is at its most effective when the band holds something back. If you want obvious payoffs, go listen to post-rock. If you want intellectually stimulating guitar music, there’s no better band doing it right now than Blessed.
The second track, “Trust,” is the ideal orchestration of Blessed’s disparate elements – the knotty guitars, the crunchy bass, the thwap of the drums – all serving a single purpose. Led by the attack-oriented rhythm section, “Truth” sounds like a rubber band about to snap, but it never quite does. The climactic final third is a seismic swell that nevertheless allows the listener to keep its head above water. Its these such decisions that suggest a more measured approach than previous albums. Their first couple EPs were the sound of a band discovering itself. Salt was a flex. The iii EP and its subsequent remixes showed a playful, experimental side that didn’t quite command the je nais se quoi of Salt. Circuitous is a statement piece. Given time, Blessed’s innovative music invigorates and satisfies.
Lyrically, the album relies on metaphor atmosphere rather than spelling anything out. The lone exception is “Agoraphobia,” but that may be me projecting my own terror of the outside world on the tune. It’s certainly the album’s nerviest song, with hyperactive drum shuffles and a single note guitar chord ever of the verge of pitching up. What I like about the song are Reikman’s vocals. It’s true, on Circuitous there seems to be more consideration of melody than past efforts – “Redefine,” “Anything,” and “Agoraphobia” all have some of Blessed’s most pleasing vocal moments, but the vocals on “Agoraphobia” are outright commanding, which adds to the album’s penchant for maturity over plug-in-and-turn-up. Not that there’s anything wrong with that approach. Blessed can roll like that if they want, but it’s more emotionally resonant when the band picks and chooses its spots.
And, gosh, did they ever with the album’s closer “Guillotine.” The song’s title immediately recalls the album’s artwork, created by artist and Blessed “fifth member” Nathan Donovan. The cover features the possibly disembodied head of a robot kid wearing an expression of philosophical dread. As if a reflection of such existential uncertainty, “Guillotine” takes the album’s most abrasive turn. All the tones are flat and in-your-face. Arpeggiated synths, meat-bass, and four-on-the-floor stomp drums give way to a propulsive, bombastic staccato rhythm that feels almost ceremonial. While guitars swirl and build, your pulse quickens. What can robokid see that we can’t? What vision of terror? What crumbling simulacra? I won’t spoil the album’s sparkling climax but suffice it to say that the restraint showed elsewhere on the album allows this final moment an emotional gravity. Shouting until I can’t feel myself. It’s resonant, dizzying, and somehow both satisfying but abbreviated, like a novel that concludes mid-sentence.
Riekman is quoted as saying about Circuitous, “Some things just take an eternity to finally make it to the end point.” One wonders if we’ve settled on the definition of a pandemic album all wrong. Big, established rock bands used the time to forget how to edit themselves, believing double albums would best showcase what bands of their stature could do with a few months off the road. I much prefer an album like Circuitous. Lean, unsettling, meticulous; these are songs that speak volumes without hitting you over the head.
When I think about the remarkable year of 2020, I appear like the robokid on the cover. Eyes wide. Mouth agape in a quivering frown. With a partner who worked graveyards in the ER throughout the COVID’s darkest days, it’s something I don’t like to revisit. I wonder how common this is. Are we content to paper over the uncertain past in favor of a constructed future? Because that’s what I feel like. I know what happened happened. But I’d prefer to stare ahead, dumbly gazing off into some outer dark, afraid of what might lay behind me. The beauty of Circuitous is that it allows such a consideration. Whatever it is we might leave behind, this is an album to be taken with us.