Atlanta author Blake Butler’s 2011 novel There Is No Year follows a family struck by a plague of paranormal activity. They move into a new house and reality bends around them. The hallways constrict and contract, nicking elbows and knees; the television signal is blurry for normal channels, but the premium porn station comes in crystal clear; caterpillars spawn in the mailbox. Relentlessly tactile, the book elliptically channels ennui and loneliness into weird, semi-humorous horrors that fester beneath the family’s otherwise normal life like mold.
For their third album, gospel-punk outfit Algiers, who describe Butler as a friend, have adopted the title and the mood of the book. Built around extracts from an epic poem written by frontman James Franklin Fisher, the record is saturated with dread that smolders under his scorched-earth polemics. Unlike their past records, which were awash in musical allusions and references to global struggles, There Is No Year is narrower and more internal, a shift that results in leaner, more intuitive songs. The horrors Algiers conjure—colonization, oppression, dispossession—remain diffuse, but as a unit they sound more in sync.
That focus is baked into the record. Whereas their debut was built from years of file-sharing among band members and The Underside of Power was recorded between touring and sessions across the UK and the US, There Is No Year was made in two weeks in one place. It also has only two producers, Ben Greenberg and Randall Dunn, who bring an arsenal of synths and a knack for layering sound. The result is songs that feel less leaden and overthought, like album highlight “Chaka,” which sways from a soulful disco bop to a flurry of atonal noise without the slightest bit of friction. Algiers songs have always been busy, but for once they sound loose, open-ended. The problem with the record is that this expressive turn is half-hearted. Fisher remains addicted to vague allegory and generic revelation; his writing conjures fire and brimstone but lacks the heat of the flame, the stink of the sulfur. “We all dancing to the fire,” he warns on “Hour of the Furnaces.” “Streets are raining fire/We’ll be gone now any day,” he prophesies on “Wait for the Sound.” These moments are supposed to feel urgent, but he could be talking about climate change or Burning Man. There’s no texture to his writing, no scene-setting—just intensity. On single “Dispossession,” he sits atop a mountain, looking down on a flaming America and promising that “freedom is coming soon.” For whom? When? What does it look like? Fisher speaks like a prophet, but his visions remain frustratingly opaque.
There are times when he seems to be addressing personal demons. “Misophonia,” the poem from which the lyrics are sourced, was reportedly composed during a “protracted personal period of anxiety and lack”; the title means “hatred of sound.” A musician detesting sound could be a fascinating subject if it were developed more, but the writing is too closed off to make searching for an entry point feel worthwhile. While the rhythm section molds these lapses into more imagistic, evocative shapes (the synth fills on “Unoccupied” are killer), the tracks are still structured around Fisher’s impassioned vocals, so when he falters, the whole enterprise feels aimless.
Given the chaotic sprawl of their past work, it’s refreshing for Algiers to turn inward and attempt to ground their righteous fury in soul-searching rather than the entire history of global oppression. Unfortunately, even when invoking personal anguish they make conflict feel atmospheric instead of something rooted in bodies and experiences. There’s precedent for more cosmic and conceptual accounts of struggle. Bands like Sunn O))) (who Dunn has produced for), the Comet Is Coming, and Priests have distilled grand ideas into arresting narrative, in both word and sound. And Algiers’ audio zines, the last of which invoked the Algerian revolution to explore angst and uncertainty using thickets of drone, show that they are capable of more nuanced writing . But they haven’t yet learned to translate the political into the personal, to turn abstract ideas into matters of the gut.
Buy: Rough Trade
