Fantastic Damage, El-P's solo debut, was one of the first great albums released in post-9/11 America. It was tense and paranoid, and El-P seemed to be peering over his shoulder at the gathering storm. The album's production, blending waves of cacophony over broken rhythms, was similarly bleak. And while Fan Dam didn't anticipate everything-- who, aside from perhaps Donald Rumsfeld, could've foreseen the sanctification of torture as a tool of "freedom"-- it did give form to our own feelings of dread and helplessness.
Though I'll Sleep When You're Dead is (slightly) more textured and melodic than its predecessor, El-P's production is still amongst the most jarring in hip-hop, and his themes and shading remain pitched to black, haunted by the prospect of a dystopian near-future: Cigarettes are extinguished on wet palms, prisoners are raped before execution, and El-P-- our crazed, sometimes indecipherable narrator-- sticks his head out of a hoopde, screaming "freedom is mine." In this world, as in ours, we're coasting in the fast lane "with doom and disease." Like El-Producto says, "The whole design got my mind crying."
"Tasmanian Pain Coaster", the album's first track, kicks off with a sample from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. "Do you think that if you were falling in space that you would slow down after a while or go faster and faster?" the first voice (Moira Kelley's Donna Hayward) asks. "Faster and faster," heroine Laura Palmer replies. "For a long time, you wouldn't feel anything. And you'd burst into fire, forever."
El-P spends 13 tracks exploring the freefalling fatalism of that quote. America is ablaze and El-P is fucked up from the floor up: "Why should I be sober when God is so clearly dusted out his mind?" the rapper asks on "Smithereens". The reply never comes, and he stumbles along like Rory Cochrane, too dazed to be angry or to put all the pieces together. On "Drive", he talks of a kid who "fuel injected a speed ball," before later admitting with a wink "my triple-A card has one too many initials."
The album works best at these moments, when it's sneering into the abyss and spitting out gallows humor. "I stood up for the God's of ore mining/ In a military humvee with no bullet-proof siding," El-P raps on "Drive". Afterwards, a distant voice chimes in, "sorry about that, guys" as robotic backing vocals emerge from a miasma of corrosive, clunky rhythms to provide a mocking refrain of sorts. Elsewhere, lead-single "Smithereens" begins with a snippet of what could be a sunny, Bob Dorough track, before a voice interjects, "Bring me the dramatic intro machine," and squishy horror synths introduce one of El-P's most caustic songs to date.
But perhaps the most explicit instance of the album's dark humor comes at the end of "Habeas Corpses", which imagines El-P and guest rapper Cage as workers aboard a futuristic prison ship. Their task is to "facilitate the end" for the incarcerated. (From the gunshots sprinkled throughout, it's easy to imagine what that would entail.) "It's almost romantic," Cage comments, but El-P doesn't share the enthusiasm. He's fallen in love with prisoner #247681Z, and his job is suddenly full of contradiction and nuance. He tries to escape, but of course escape is illusionary and temporary.
"Habeas Corpus" is similar in spirit to Fantastic Damage's "Stepfather Factory", and provides a makeshift metaphor for our own country's desire for vindication and liberation. But, as the song fades, El-P is unwilling to cop to his own seriousness, and the track fades with him and Cage laughing off the drama they've just conjured.
The jaded pose is a good look for El, and when the album tries to emote, such as on "The Overly Dramatic Truth", it falls flat on its face. The song is full of cringe-worthy lines such as "you deserve the ignorance and bliss that I wish I still had," and is too emo for its own good. But when El-P sticks to what he knows-- chronicling the grime -I'll Sleep When You're Dead is every bit as good as its predecessor. It's a scary, difficult album, but one well suited for our times.
