The opening to Age of Transparency teases us with memories of 2013's "Play By Play", still the greatest song Arthur Ashin (aka Autre Ne Veut) has ever recorded. "Baaaaaaaaaaaabe," he warbles, his voice soulful, strained and knowing, before he slides into a reprisal of "On and On", remaking the upbeat single into an exercise in jazz improvisation and bare-boned composition that goes just long enough before it chokes out into a sputter. A theme for the album is wrapped within; this set of songs extends something beautiful to its limits and then tries to will it beyond its end. Sometimes to a fault.
Ashin's showiness as a singer is part of his grandeur; his voice has always managed to pull a song together. Yes, he's been lumped into the inner mines of "bedroom R&B" or "PBR&B"–the latter of which is an innocuous title for a genre, an easy way of associating the soul of R&B with the electronic embrace of indie–but he has always had his eye somewhere outside the bedroom. His singing feels directed to a shrine rather than the club, and he's able to emote despair and acute yearning through the rawness of his voice, not in spite of it. It can be unsettling to hear that singular spark start to work against him now.
The disconnect could very well come from the fact that he's now surrounded by a proper choir, and on his most sonically incoherent album yet. On "Get Out" he is navigating a track that feels primed for cinematic pop glory, but the song flags as it goes on and his flights of melodic inspiration begin to feel like a parody of a blues singer. On "Over Now", a glitchy sample turns a dreary lullaby to the death of something or other into a vacuous wall of static; what is clearly meant to be a captivating mess of noise becomes literally difficult to listen to. "Switch Hitter" turns a menacing pop framework, with its elastic guitars and looming synths, into something that feels half-baked. Where these songs hit their most visceral moments is where they can feel their most contrived.
Joel Ford (Ford & Lopatin) and Young Ejecta appear on production again, but Ashin has graduated from his former roommate's Software imprint to a bigger label with a bigger budget, and with that his sound has become cleaner, denser, and glossier, barring some of the organic simplicity that he's benefited from in the past. His lyrics remain simple and poignant, but some of what surprised us on Anxiety has lost its newness here. The sudden moments of rapture–the ones that that pushed through layers of electronic ambience–remain, but are less frequent and more predictable.
That said, when it does all come together on this album, it really is quite gorgeous. "Panic Room" is some of his best writing musically and lyrically. The lines "I don't want to feel like you're not here with me/ Even when you say that you are not here with me" are heart wrenching on their own. Lay them on a wave of synths and the flutter of percussive rolls and the track is as enveloping as "Play By Play" or "Counting" were before it. "World War Pt. 2" dabbles with some frantic pop sampling before retreating, underscoring the fevered pull of a line like "heartbreak is not enough." "Age of Transparency" is another highlight. In these moments, where he approaches the brink and opens his arms to it, the messiness of his intense and manic music mirrors the messiness of life.
The title of Age of Transparency acts as Ashin's commentary on the way we live our lives out in the open, and his music seeks to pull you through uneasy, emotional dregs with its every turn. But what once felt intimate has started to lean to over-exertion. Here we see what happens after the fireworks have burst, when its casing is left smoldering and you're hoping for more.
