From somewhere within the fertile ooze of Montreal’s famously prolific late-’00s underground scene emerged Oen Sujet, a revolving musical collective whose robotic, astringent art pop rendered them orthogonal to peers who’d go on to make some of the era’s biggest splashes. Oen Sujet released a lone album, 2009’s Life Given To Quiet Places, and a few remixes of other artists before retreating as silently and suddenly as they had arrived. Now, after 17 years, they return with The Friendliest Fight We Know, a record that builds on the band’s prior work with startling continuity and immediacy.
Oen Sujet boasts just one consistent member throughout their lifespan, composer John Winston Phillips, whose style evokes the recursive labyrinths of writer Jorge Luis Borges: rigid synth patterns; sharp, mechanical percussion; melodies and basslines that repeat, stutter, halt, and overlap with desultory flair. Songs like 2009’s “Bird and Binocular” play like serial novels in miniature, developing then discarding dozens of distinct plots in a sparse, proggy odyssey that arrives at its anthemic chorus almost by accident. There’s a tone of alienation running through the group’s work, manifesting as a clash between aesthetics of rationalist sheen and heady mysticism that, depending on the light, read as both wholly improvised and meticulously programmed. Oen Sujet’s catalog sounds equally like the product of a random number generator or a malfunctioning algorithm as of a deeply mercurial artist.
The Friendliest Fight We Know credits one other core member, lead vocalist and lyricist Hammerbell, in addition to Phillips. Hammerbell’s contributions inhabit a similar timbral space as those of past lead Julie-Blanche Vandenbroucque: affectless recitations delivered in a husky monotone that lies somewhere between the breathy gasp of Imogen Heap, the blasé coo of Lætitia Sadier, and the procedural churn of GPS directions. Hammerbell’s voice flutters and weaves through opener “Tap the Working Space,” diving at points into a whisper that shivers atop a jaunty beat scored with bursts of harpsichord and erratic bass. Some sections of “Tap the Working Space”—its gentle stepwise phrases, its shimmering waves of flutish synths—scan as near-mirrors to motifs from the opening track of Life Given To Quiet Places, as though Phillips and company are retracing past steps. The impression turns more literal later with “Circled Centered,” a revamp of an old single from 2010 lent gravitas by ghostly piano, percussion that rattles like windup toys, and raspy harmonies traded between Phillips and Hammerbell. This isn’t to say that the new work comes off hackish or uninspired. Far from it: The callbacks feel like a celebration and a natural consequence of the sheer specificity and clarity of Oen Sujet’s sound.
Some ideas, however, fail to launch under the weight of their aspirations. “Potentiators and Breakthroughs,” the album’s longest track, is also its most aimless, whiling away minutes on lifeless back-and-forth patter that can’t find a solid anchor. Oen Sujet scrub through so many concepts in one song that, often, their successes seem to be more the result of exhausting all other options than they are of calculated maneuvers. See the last minute of “The Friendliest Fight We Know,” whose stochastic threads of sing-song melody finally weave into a triumphant theme as Hammerbell intones, “The thunder came/And went away/The same with shame/It went away,” a hypnotic lyrical rondo that persists and swells with lush new layers of sound until the song’s conclusion. The catharsis of moments like this—and the unpredictability with which they’re deployed—endows Oen Sujet’s music with delight worth chasing, but the climb doesn’t always feel equal to the drop.
The Friendliest Fight We Know offers a value proposition that’s directly proportionate to the extent one can sync with the band’s distinct wavelength. Click with them, and it’s a breezy ride through a Greatest Hits-level lineup of their best instincts; misalign, and it’s a struggle with music that lounges in its own inconstancy. Underneath the pomp and the quirk, though, lies a timeless, self-assured vision unmarred by concessions toward marketability. Even if it took nearly two decades to prove, it’s never been clearer that Oen Sujet have a deep understanding of their niche and how to speak to it. They perform as though keenly aware that they’re the only band in the world that can make the music they’re making.
