There’s no better time than the apocalypse to get jacked. That’s the none-too-subtle takeaway from the presentation of Devon Welsh’s third solo album, the threateningly titled Come With Me If You Want to Live. Welsh is lifting weights in every press photo; the garish album art exaggerates his muscles even further; the only thing in the way of a bio is a short story written by Welsh from the perspective of a journalist being shepherded around a hellscape called America 2 by a writer using the alias Max Paragon that looks like “Rambo meets Arnold, with a dash of Houdini.” Pre-release singles “You Can Do Anything” and “That’s What We Needed” mirror this burly chaos; their thunderous breakbeats are easily the loudest drums Welsh has ever sung over. But beyond the imagery, the imagined backstory, and those two singles, Come With Me If You Want to Live is a far less aggressive listen than it might seem, one that remains squarely within Welsh’s wheelhouse.
As the vocalist of the now-defunct project Majical Cloudz, Welsh radiated a deadly seriousness amid the duo’s lush, ambient-inspired soundscapes. “I’ve always dealt with revealing myself, and intimacy, and trusting people,” he said in a 2015 Pitchfork cover story. “It’s scary shedding those layers and saying, ‘This is who I am, this is how I feel.’” On the surface, Come With Me If You Want to Live’s thematic underpinnings suggest a departure from the brutally honest, autobiographical mode that persisted on Welsh’s previous solo outings, but his depictions of the end times—set to plaintive synth pop and dramatic, reverb-soaked vocals—still favor the hyper-personal, even the mundane.
The album’s lyrics are predominantly directed at friends and family, treating the wreckage outside less as an excuse to make sweeping declarations about the state of the world than a final chance to say what needs to be said to the people that matter most. There are songs titled “Brother” and “Sister.” “Before the Moon Was Full” is a misty-eyed, fatalistic look back at a romance that bloomed before the shit hit the fan. “Best Laid Plans” addresses Welsh’s late father: “Hey man I’d really love to see you/I feel so far away from you/I really miss you.” Even the angrier-sounding singles revolve around calls to action to those close to Welsh: “You Can Do Anything” argues for shrugging off the shackles of societal pressures, and “That’s What We Needed” advocates for stewing in your feelings.
Welsh kicked off his solo career with 2018’s Dream Songs, an album built around string-heavy live instrumentation provided by multiple collaborators, which starkly contrasted with Majical Cloudz’s spartan, synth-heavy palette. The following year’s True Love reverted back to the mean, and despite the aforementioned breakbeats, the bulk of Come With Me If You Want to Live could also be easily mistaken for Majical Cloudz material. As on True Love, Welsh is largely left to his own devices, with his plaintive baritone and penchant for moody atmospheres suggesting John Cale recording an album inspired by the Blue Nile’s late-night masterpiece Hats. The meditative second half of the album treats percussion as a form of sketchwork rather than a propulsive backbone, and wispy, reverb-laden synths serve as the sole melodic accompaniment to Welsh’s straight-faced vocals.
There are moments when this vibe serves the theme. The gothy “Fooled Again” reeks of appropriate desperation. “Twenty Seven” is an intriguing story about an aspiring musician that strikes an uncanny-valley connection between Welsh’s own trajectory and the dismal, not-so-fictional music-industry landscape that he lays out in the album bio. The scorched-earth intensity of the two lead singles was enough to prop up Come With Me If You Want to Live’s powerful, if slightly preposterous, fanciful backstory. If Welsh had continued to pursue that slight stylistic shift, the album might have pulled off an improbable balance between a pulpy sci-fi vibe and its creator’s gift for stoic realism. Instead, it’s a strangely somber Rambo reboot in which our muscular hero spends most of his time staring pensively out of rain-soaked windows.
Correction: An earlier version of this review erroneously stated that “Best Laid Plans” is about a friend; it is about Welsh’s late father. Also, it erroneously stated that the bio was written by Welsh; in fact, Max Paragon is a pen name for a different (unidentified) writer.
