I don’t know if technology has accelerated the process of nostalgia, but we’re only six years removed from the blip the words “witch house” created on the music scene, and even fewer than that from when art-damaged kids creating abrasive rap seemed novel. Self Restraint, the latest album from the Northampton, Mass. rapper Gods Wisdom of the New England-based Dark World collective arrives feeling strangely dated, as if it’s an artifact from 2011 or 2012. The tropes are there, from “666” in Gods Wisdom Bandcamp URL, Tumblr-inspired “wtf” samples (like a snippet of “The Simpsons” here or old news footage there) to the music videos made to look as if they’re shot on VHS; the obsession with the most obvious staples of rap is there, too, from booming low-end to hyperbolic boasts (“in high school I had sex with my teacher” from “2 Lives” is a galling moment, because it’s unclear if this is supposed to be funny or obtuse—it doesn’t work either way), and it’s all done in a manner that suggests this stuff is blazingly au courant. (Noted cool person Kim Gordon, for instance, put Gods Wisdom in her Top Ten of 2015 for Artforum).
Some of the songs work on a goofy, outré level—in spite of its many forehead slapping punchlines, “2 Lives” (which is two years old by the way) rides a triumphant trap beat that Gods Wisdom slathers his voice over with a hook from fiery singer/songwriter Mal Devisa, and it’s a discomfiting piece of music, something that escaped Western Massachusetts and ended up sounding almost fresh, perhaps because instead of winking and telegraphing all of its weirdness, it just kind of exists. Before that, “Respect Women” works a brooding, minimal beat like a good Lil Yachty song does, and Gods Wisdom manages a few memorable lines: “So heavy metal/sexuality of the devil/I’m going out like James Dean/but so much colder.”
Self Restraint bottoms out when Gods Wisdom attempts to create a ruckus, though—instead finding some catharsis in the noise, like avant-rapper B L A C K I E does, it’s just an endurance test—there’s no greater meaning behind the mess. His attempts at “going weird” like the “Peter Piper”-reminiscent bells on the lethargic “Leather Wings” don’t have enough oomph behind them to help Gods Wisdom access the confidence held by similar artists like Juiceboxxx or Baltimore’s Schwarz. It feels hollow, a bunch of signposts (classic samples, smooth jazz sax, vague vaporwave vibe) that don’t point anywhere. (It’s maybe worth noting at this point though that another Gods Wisdom track, “Beep Beep,” is a deliriously silly earworm that is better than anything on Self Restraint.)
And unfortunately, while his sleepwalking-Folk Implosion-meets-Lil Uzi Vert delivery has intermittent charm, it overwhelms the record and for the most part a lot of Self Restraint sounds like Salem Part 2, but updated to a more current operating system. Instead of chopped and screwed rap, the record takes some cues from drill and even Waka Flocka Flame, two inspirations that also stopped being novel in 2012. The opening title track and “Paranoia” are basically Salem songs, noise dripped into rap rhythms with blasé vocals on top—a pointedly unpleasant listening experience. There’s even a micro-staple of witch house—the left-field cover—on Self Restraint, “On the Beach” (yes, Neil Young), which exists outside the parameters of good and bad. It’s a Rorschach test. Did you find something cool/rebellious/interesting in the ugly, casual nihilism of witch house? Then you should like this. If you thought it was all hollow “but that was the point,” you might like this. If you’d rather listen to literally anything else, keep moving.
