If music were only the sum of the adjectives generally used to describe it, Jesu-- beautiful, brutal, melodic, metallic, heavy, heavenly-- would probably be my favorite band of all time. Since 2003, Justin K. Broadrick has stretched gentle, arching pop tunes over relentless drums and electric guitars. Jesu is the more accessible extension of Broadrick's Godflesh, grafting that old band's maw to music both bleak and hazy, warm and hummable. If those ideas seem mutually exclusive, consider Jesu alongside a select cartel of drone, metal, slowcore, and shoegaze bands-- My Bloody Valentine, Alcest, Low, Elliott Smith, the Stars of the Lid-- who make music that's pretty but neither slight nor light.
Jesu, however, works for me less than half of the time-- generally only when he finds balance between the polar adjectives above. Oftentimes, the beautiful stuff seems listless and flimsy (by and large, 2007's Conqueror) while the heavy stuff seems aimless and sprawling for sprawl's sake (the compelling but wandering self-titled debut, from 2004). Heart Ache & Dethroned, which combines two Jesu EPs, is an unlikely panacea: As focused on ideas and emotion as it is on clarity and concision, Heart Ache & Dethroned filters Jesu's essence into six diverse, dynamic tracks. If you're new to Broadrick's expansive aesthetic, this is an excellent inlet; if you're a veteran, it's a payoff both perfectly aggressive and magnetic.
This collection gathers the previously unreleased four-track EP, Dethroned, and Heart Ache, Jesu's long out-of-print debut. The decision to couple the newest Jesu recordings with the oldest might seem odd, but it works both as a showcase of Broadrick's wide interests and of this particular project's careful, significant progress. Consider the two 20-minute tracks of Heart Ache, each ostensibly built to occupy one side of a 12". Each piece is a flood of ideas. The title track stunts a rhythmic march with a castrati choir, bass throb, and guitar noise. It all gives way to what's little more than a standard six-minute Jesu song that then cycles through a nihilist mantra for another unnecessary six minutes. "Ruined", as you might imagine from the title, is thematically hopeless, rebuking all the world's wisdom and opportunity for improvement. Broadrick delivers that message and spends the next five minutes grinding through the riff, doubling the rhythm and shouting, "Right. Wrong." The outro-- pretty, patient, mostly pointless-- lasts for eight minutes.
The four new tracks here aren't much older than those first pieces, but they're the best testament yet to Broadrick's evolution. He began these songs in 2004, but he finished them only this year. That patience worked, resulting in four of Jesu's most dynamic, rich, and concise songs. Gone is the excess of those early recordings, though the heavy, industrial stomp that seemed like the true transition between Godflesh and Jesu (and occasionally went missing in the latter) remains. The title track is a propulsive number, its drums fighting through the sheets of guitar like fists, its multiple vocal lines spider-webbing around the beat. The athletic "Annul" continues to build well past the point where you think it can build no more; it collapses without warning and re-emerges through a fog of suffocated sound. "Aureated Skin", though, is a glowing power ballad, the metallic crunch serving only as a rising tide for a reflective triumph. Closer "I Can Only Disappoint You" is lumbering and mean, but it's delivered with the sheer resolve and tunefulness of Low's Alan Sparhawk. In Jesu's orbit, these songs border on pop hits.
"The EP might be the ideal format for Justin Broadrick's music, regardless of his alias," wrote Jess Harvell for Pitchfork last year on his way to praise for Jesu's glowing Opiate Sun. "The three-or-four-song dose mainlines his all-consuming mood of the moment without the potential dilution of trying to fill up a CD." Especially for Jesu, that remains true; even here, due in large part to the tacked-on diversions of Heart Ache, listening to this package in one sitting takes its toll. Consider the parts, though: Heart Ache suggests a sense of ambition and movement grander than that of any Jesu LP. Dethroned, meanwhile, suggests a deliberate move toward the middle, with relatively compact song structures and dynamic and textural variety. If Broadrick can unite those ideas into one 40-minute Jesu blast, this band might finally have its full-length masterpiece.
