The city of Warsaw has two (equally dour) associations in rock history. It was the original name of a certain morose Mancunian post-punk band before they got all inside-baseball with their World War II references, and it was the inspiration for "Warszawa," the haunting ambient symphony that heralds the foreboding second act of David Bowie's Low. As the first Warsaw-based musician in years to plug into the North American indie industrial complex, Tobiasz Biliński doesn't do much to dispel those grim allusions. He may possess the gentle voice of a sensitive folksinger and the byzantine mind of a composer, but at the core of his music beats the blackened heart of a goth.
The Provider is Biliński's third album as Coldair, but the first to land in the U.S. (through a publishing and digital distribution deal with Sub Pop). And from an aesthetic standpoint, it may as well be his proper debut, because it's less a full realization of what he's been working toward than a wholesale reformulation of it. Coldair's previous efforts were more like warm gusts: gentle Nick Drakean serenades guided by winsome, wandering melodies and buttressed by brass fanfares. But 2013's Whose Blood suggested a creeping unease, with digital jolts and foreboding, Swans-like percussion that poked black holes in the scenery. On The Provider, Biliński reaches into those fissures and tears them wide open, allowing that darkness to become all-consuming. Listen close and you can still hear the acoustic strums and trombone trills that underpinned his earlier work, but here they're subservient to frosty synth drones, icy 808s, and synthetic handclaps that sting like smacks to the face on a winter's night. As the arresting opener "Endear" emerges from a misty haze into an urgent, industrial-grade throb, Biliński is transformed from humble troubadour to the high priest at black mass, complete with an ominous church-organ hum that powers the song's intense finale.
But there's a bit of a Wizard of Oz effect at play on The Provider—the songs may project a majestic ultraviolet glow, but the dry ice eventually clears to reveal the lonely, wounded soul pulling the levers behind the curtain. Biliński's language has become brutally direct: "My whole life is falling apart so fast," he sings at one point, and The Provider can be heard as his attempt to put the pieces back together, resulting in songs that seem both fragile and imposing in their construction, all jagged edges and exposed wires. The overwhelming mood of distress is reflected in the unsettled arrangements—electro-shocked beats clash with militaristic drum fills, pianos and shoegaze guitar drizzle rub up against anxious tick-tock rhythms, meditative melodies hover above dirty dancefloor grinds. But that internal tension dissipates when the songs start to sprawl out, as on the synth-smeared title track or the sputtering bombast of "Suit Yourself."
The Provider is most compelling when its textural expanse induces claustrophobia. Beneath the clatter, The Provider elicits the discomfiting sensation of eavesdropping on Biliński's private conversations—with family members, with ex-lovers, with himself—about his feelings of inadequacy in the face of parental and societal pressures. But his voice remains as light as the subject matter is heavy, and is often double-tracked into angelic harmonies that help smooth over the songs' corrosive surfaces. And even when working with electro-sonics and brittle beats, Biliński's classically-trained approach to songcraft prevails—on strobe-lit standouts like "Perfect Son" and "Denounce," he builds big hooks out of scraps and shards, skilfully layering and arranging his minimal elements to maximize their dramatic impact. Ironically, the more oppressive environs of The Provider prove to be a more effective showcase for Biliński's emotionally charged songcraft than his heart-on-sleeve folkie phase. Because that's the funny thing about cold air—when the weather turns so frigid that your exhalation produces visible vapors, it feels like you're breathing fire.
