The Blow has always bundled electro-pop, twee-punk, and performance art into spindly confessionals, but it has done so in three distinct incarnations. First, as the millennium turned, it was Khaela Maricich’s solo project, lo-fi and artsy-cuddly in the K Records tradition. Second, in the mid-2000s, it was a sleeker collaboration between Maricich and YACHT’s Jona Bechtolt, like mussed up Metric for northwestern punk kids. And third, since around 2007, the Brooklyn via Oregon band has been the combined effort of Maricich and Melissa Dyne, a conceptual installation artist who initially enhanced the Blow’s concerts and then began to work with Maricich on the music.
This iteration of the Blow is behind its first new album in four years, Brand New Abyss, in which Maricich’s spiky sensitivity comes in a redesigned container. Moving away from digital composition, the duo ventures into modular synthesis, patching together a rig of analog oscillators and filters and then half teaching it to speak, half learning its language. It makes a huge difference that the music is grounded more in space and time. Unfortunately, it’s not an entirely positive change. It seems that bouncy samples mutate into loquacious indie pop more readily than rudimentary analog synthesis does. Maricich doesn’t always adapt her grid-forged singing style to fit these blurrier compositions, and two odd cover choices cast long, puzzling shadows.
When it comes to covers, intention—as expressed through the rendition—matters. We need to feel there’s an idea beyond the wan rush of hearing a familiar song in a new context. But it’s hard to fathom what the Blow intended with their out-of-focus cover of Eagles chestnut “Peaceful Easy Feeling.” The production is thin and simplistic. The vocal melody is tentative, as if Maricich hadn’t completely decided how to phrase it before recording. One wants to read something subversive into her take on lyrics about “what a woman can do to your soul,” but the arch, quizzical tone doesn’t feel subversive. This isn’t an errant deep cut; it’s the album’s first song, and it sets an emotionally inscrutable frame around everything that follows.
“Dark Cold Magic” is much more appealing and legible, though the vocal line still can’t help but feel a little desultory with such sparse harmonic and rhythmic material to work with. This is an ongoing issue; the compositions are too often limited to a big bass plodding out a slow, simple melody under a thin scrim of atmospheric effects. But “Dark Cold Magic” and “Think About Me” are affecting performances of intimacy, sure to cast a starry mood at concerts. They showcase Maricich’s insightful, ambitious lyrics about obsession, heartbreak, and reconciliation, in which, through protracted puns, rhetorical overreach is transmuted into relatable vulnerability.
A cover of “The Greatest Love of All,” popularized by Whitney Houston, sits in the center of the album like a stone. The vocal arrangement, again, seems listless and haphazard. The approach to the material betrays neither joy nor relish; the song is neither met on its glorious terms nor stripped down to reveal something hidden inside it. You’d almost think the Blow were just mocking a cheesy pop song, relying on a twinge of ironic recognition, but that can’t be right (punk and indie bands have been covering pop songs for decades). Still, the decision to emotionally cauterize an anthem that connects with millions is truly confusing.
But then, at the halfway point, the record starts to find its stride, divulging exciting glimmers of a fully formed new direction. The Laurie Anderson-like sprechgesang of “The Woman You Want Her to Be” makes so much more sense with the sparse sonic palette than strained R&B vocals do; it’s like Maricich stops fighting against the music and feeds it the texture and language it’s starved for. Full of acute emotional shades and vivid social scenes, it’s also genuinely funny. The same is true of “Get Up,” which nudges into rap, and the album starts to inflate with a confidence and ease that is scarce on the first half.
If the Blow were to retire right now, Maricich could make a claim few can—she wrote a perfect song. “True Affection,” with that unforgettable lift in the vocal line during the chorus, was a flawless example of the burbling warmth and immediacy of Postal Service-era electro-pop. This was 2006, when Bechtolt’s suave electronics aided Maricich in toying with pop idioms from bounce rap to soft rock with a lot of musicality and a minimum of winking. Brand New Abyss, by its exploratory nature, doesn’t aspire to such great heights. But this valiant yet flawed endeavor feels more like a false start than a dead end, if the Blow keeps watering the ideas seeding the back half and stays away from karaoke.
