James Krivchenia treats his solo career as a chance to let loose. “I can just do whatever I want,” he’s said of these endeavors, and it’s easy to believe him. As 1000000000s, he manipulated Taylor Swift songs into piss-taking ephemera. On 2022’s Blood Karaoke, he combined YouTube videos into mystery-bag collages. These works are a far cry from his collaborations, whether as the drummer for Big Thief or as a session musician for pop stars like Swift, Ed Sheeran, and Gracie Abrams. But his debut solo LP for Planet Mu, Performing Belief, feels like a big deal: His dance music is more serious, stripped of irony and impish glee, and he’s brought in Joshua Abrams and Sam Wilkes to flesh out the sound. He offers a litany of styles here, most of which fall into a sort of pan-global, folktronica-adjacent microhouse. There’s only one problem: It has no verve.
While Performing Belief is a new tack for Krivchenia, he’s made music like this for years, the kind that has the germ of an idea but doesn’t know what to do with it. Take “Undesigned,” which opens the album with a barrage of drum patterns that sort of just exist. It is strange to hear a song meander for five minutes without providing catharsis, a sense of propulsion, or a coherent atmosphere. At times, he stumbles on batida-like rhythms, but it scans as happenstance, recalling the way the sketches on 2018’s No Comment gesture at pointillistic trance and caustic noise without capturing either’s ecstasy. Even tracks with more robust arrangements are frustratingly indifferent towards structure. “Bracelets for Unicorns” starts as an improvised jam session that coalesces into a groove, but then Krivchenia hurls field recordings and synth stabs with reckless abandon. He’s having fun, sure, but his joy only translates to haphazard tedium.
Performing Belief is partly built on Krivchenia’s own collection of field recordings, but their commingling with electronic sounds is slapdash and undercooked. “Filling in the Swamp” throws in a bed of relaxing nature sounds and calls it a day—the layering proves shallow. “Metaphoric Leakage” fares better because its lapping waves are integrated with the music; their loping rhythm offers a welcome, if awkward, counterpoint to the bobbing reggae-like instrumentation. This is not so different from how a lot of these songs are constructed. Often, Krivchenia presents flashy sonic elements—like the dubstep bassline on “The Wounded Place,” or the stuttering vocal sample on “Probably Wizards”—without capitalizing on their textural and rhythmic potential. He’s too cavalier with these tracks, his ambitions ending in a hodgepodge of varied sounds.
It’s hard to begrudge an artist for testing out ideas in a lower-stakes arena, but Krivchenia’s solo albums are especially gutting because there are always a couple heaters. “Judge the Seeds” is a thrilling exercise in sound design, with explosive percussive accents and resounding plucked strings unfurling into a shimmering sea of bells and keys and flutes. It's one of few songs where he invites you to revel in a bevy of instruments while actually taking you somewhere. (That it concludes with a funky gamelan detour feels like a well-earned punchline.) “Sympathetic Magic” is another highlight, thanks to its clear musical progression. The dreamy, crystalline chords that anchor the song make the chirping birds at the end feel all the more special. Those songs are a sign that Krivchenia can conjure something transcendent when he shows restraint. But given his unwieldy discography, that doesn’t seem like his goal.
