The band names that Michael Collins chooses for his dazed pop projects function as tests of faith. He’s operated under the monikers Run DMT and Salvia Plath, made surreal soul and funk as half of Silk Rhodes, and his latest record comes as Drugdealer. Each choice has been a little goofy and somewhat dumb. But these words are also imbued with the pupil-dilated honesty that comes when you dabble with the sort of mind-expanding substances he’s nodding to. There’s always been more to it than just grinning jokes: the names are bellwethers that let you know if you’ll relate to Collins’ perspective, not indicators of the quality or content of the songs themselves. If people detest the names, Collins said in a 2013 interview, “they probably won’t really like the songs, and that’s just a-ok with me.”
Despite the name, Collins is framing this Drugdealer effort as a new beginning. The title—The End of Comedy—can be read as a way of buttoning up the past, moving onward to sweetness and sincerity. But that is, in a sense, what he’s been doing all along. Hidden underneath titles like Bong Voyage, One Hitter Wonders, and Get Ripped or Die Trying is a serious songwriter who’s more in touch with the world around him than his jokes suggest.
Now that Collins has a few extra sets of hands around, that’s highlighted even further. Ariel Pink, Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering, members of Mac DeMarco’s live band, and the Montreal freaks in Sheer Agony all turn up over the course of The End of Comedy’s 11 tracks. They smooth out some of Collins’ stranger—and occasionally, more grating—tendencies. There’s no rambly spoken word pieces about DMT trips or distended drone works. Instead, there’s things like “Suddenly,” a slowly unravelling pop song about joy, newness, and unexpected realizations. The lyrics—sung by Mering—are loose and abstract, but after meandering in the dark a bit, she sees the rise of the morning sun, and with it comes a wave of comfort: “Now I feel like I’m home again.” Even its lyrics are delirious and psychedelic. It’s the sort of song Collins has been writing, or trying to write, over his whole career, but delivered in a much more clear-headed way.
That lucidity becomes the defining characteristic of The End of Comedy. There’s a newfound focus that was missing even on Salvia Plath’s The Bardo Story and Silk Rhodes’ self-titled—two relatively hi-fi works by Collins’ standards. Previously, Collins has fogged his more produced recordings with dizzy arrangements, but now he’s able to turn even the lazily strummed acoustics and heavy-lidded slide work of “Easy to Forget” into something purposeful. Ariel Pink, also operating in his surprisingly sincere mode, pens an ode to confusion and amnesia, but Collins breathes life into it, stopping and starting the instrumental in ways that propel what should be a stoned, slippery song.
Comedy, in fact, is not necessarily gone. Collins still takes time to use a convoluted metaphor about rolling spliffs during the heatwave plod of “Sea of Nothing.” But what surrounds the peculiar humor is carefully considered in a way that few of his recordings have been. Collins’ work has always had this potential—the untamed electric energy of synapses pushed past their usual operating capacity. Now, with a little help from his friends, he’s finally able to shape and direct it. He’s taken a step back, and instead of aiming for a laugh, a smile will do.
