by Selina Yang (@y_aniles)
On Psychedelic Anxiety, Frances Chang takes us through the cognitive clarity required to transform melancholy into mourning. In psychoanalysis, melancholy is shrapnel lodged in the soul, piercing with every movement. Buried in the subconscious, the pain of unassimilated memories radiates outwards into malaise. Before that scar can fade, it must first blister and darken. The sophomore album of this New York art punk is a sensory amalgamation of haunting memories and chromatic films, gift wrapped in angelic gauze. With allusions to Deerhoof’s eclectic instrumentation, the groove is grafted onto Jeff Buckley’s sweeping romanticism, then filtered through ambient progressive rock.
Tumbling silk hums envelop the listener. They are hymnal in their precision, even as the instrument selection becomes increasingly eclectic. “Spiral in Houston” features a patchy drum kit punching through cherubic sighs. While a cowbell reminiscent of The Smiths teases the beginning of an indie pop hit on an ex-techno heart, the clattering of kitchen utensils and insect-like clicks anchor the track in the experimental. On “Eye Land,” that same angelic layering rips into a fist pumping garage rock hyperventilation. Maybe the reality of Psychedelic Anxiety takes place within a bed-rotting dream, but for Chang, they take place in a travelog of memory swirling through childhood memories and space.
Throughout the album, Chang’s off beat style – what she calls “slacker prog” – ventures from warm spaghetti western grooves to neon lit synth drones, in the process painting an impressionist cityscape. The ambient noise of everyday life is abstracted into a backdrop. Time itself is folded into a swaying turbulence. Yet, Chang’s sharp creative clarity cuts through any melancholic fog. Once the shrapnel is assimilated into the self, one is forever changed yet whole again.
On “Sci-Fi Soap Opera,” the sound of a toy piano takes the grand stage. Even in its plasticky virtuosity, Chang’s heartfelt spoken word reminisces on the intertwining red strings of change: “I think we’ve grown irreversibly together,” therefore, “it’s too late to sever it without cutting some of me out.” By this middle point, all layers of reservation are melted away, and Chang bears her heart. Absorbing the listener into the limbo between wish and reality, the gentle lounge synths of “Body of the Lighting” resonate into the abyss, a rare moment of urban solitude. At first, the track’s background hum of rain sounds more like television static.
“I love being scared of the moon with you,” Chang reminisces. Plinking piano foams beneath her spoken word. Strings quake beneath her command. The album ends with the track “Rate My Aura,” a poetic yet danceable overture backed by a feisty drum kick. The burdened crooner of the opening track is no longer the same woman who confidently smirks on the closer. In this play’s final act, Psychedelic Anxiety throws a bouquet into the crowd, leaving the audience caught in its retro enchantment even after Chang has healed herself long before.