Airick Woodhead has been in the right place at the right time more than once. The son of Canadian folk artist David Woodhead, he grew up surrounded by live music and studio equipment, and discovered production while tweaking his father's tracks into a noisy mess. As a teenager, he ambled around Europe and was invited to live at Toronto DIY space House of Everlasting Super Joy, which eventually brought him into the famed Montreal scene responsible for birthing Purity Ring, Grimes, Majical Cloudz, Blue Hawaii, Arbutus Records, et al. Hell, Woodhead's first song released as Doldrums was an official remix for Portishead, an obvious and important inspiration to the '90s baby's synthy, sample-based avant-pop. It all reads like a young, independent artist's fantasy, and a more advantageous backdrop for Doldrums' first LP couldn't be dreamed up.
Lesser Evil made good on that promise in 2013, revealing that Woodhead's frenzied melodic sensibilities and nasally squeak could transcend the cresting wave of Merriweather Post Pavilion devotees. Lesser Evil was also fortunate enough to be wedged between the ascending stars of Grimes' Visions and Majical Cloudz's Impersonator: It was a good time to be an arty millennial with a laptop, and better still to be an information-hungry sound collagist with a distinctive voice. But where Visions embraced fluttering digitalia and Impersonator took a more direct, humanist approach, Doldrums' first LP burrowed into the uncanny valley, forging its identity from the schizophrenic clutter of online media and the hallucinatory states readily available in everyday life. Sleep, lucid dreaming, technology, ancient mysticism, prescription drugs, obscure YouTube clips, popular music, obsession, anxiety, love, death—Lesser Evil somehow made it all fit inside a puzzling logic that was more intriguing for its inscrutable delirium.
So it makes sense that Woodhead would continue his train of thought on album two, The Air Conditioned Nightmare. But if Lesser Evil took a macro view of that mania through a greased fisheye lens, then Nightmare examines it with a magnifying glass under harsh fluorescent light. And that can be just as unflattering as it sounds. The elements and production methods haven't been replaced so much as they've been reassessed and recalibrated. No longer is Woodhead's Yorke-ian tenor awash in whirlpools of clipped audio and choppy beat fragments; now the underlying synths have taken a forceful lead next to polished and pronounced drum machines. Doldrums has effectively cleaned up his act, and in the process he's rendered his music's least remarkable parts the loudest and most integral.
A bonkers track like "HOTFOOT", or the elegiac splendor of "Funeral for Lightning", works best in this new setting, largely because the energy and songwriting are powerful enough to wheedle some emotional magic out of the machines. More often than not, though, Nightmare buries the details in favor of a generic synth hook or noodly freakout. The saccharine bassline in "Loops", itself a trite tale of feuding lovers, seems to be gunning for a 2008 Urban Outfitters compilation—that is, when the song doesn't digress into a beatless murk of pitchy vocals and awkward sample juggling. On "Industry City", Doldrums attempts to balance aggressive electro, slippery machine funk, aerial singalongs, and noisy rave approximations. It might go over well at a midday festival performance, but on record it sounds like tracklist filler.
There are good ideas somewhere inside The Air Conditioned Nightmare, and anyone determined enough to look might get something out of them. Lyrics ranging from naively clichéd to slyly astute—often within the same verse—sketch a rough picture of Woodhead coming to grips with routine, non-transitory life. He fears the impending threat of mundane domestic relationships ("Blown Away"), condemns technological dependence ("My Friend Simjen", "Industry City"), illustrates the throes of romance ("We Awake", "Loops"), and ponders the loss of art and artists ("Funeral for Lightning"). The themes here are vaguely linked to a collection of Henry Miller essays on America's growing disconnection from nature and mankind, but no one would fault you for not catching any similarities outside of their shared title. Not even the singer himself can find a clear through line for his scattered coming-of-age musings. Some might call it simply "growing up."
Of all the songs, "Video Hostage" is the most significant. It also happens to be Nightmare's unrivaled highlight. Over a rhythmic sample set that billows and sways like something off Oneohtrix Point Never's Replica, Woodhead waxes analytical while in a trauma-induced existential trance. He's said it's loosely about desensitization, but the song also touches on questions of personal background, identity, artistic motivation, and nature. Woodhead seems to shed the world around him, examining finer aspects of his inner self. He's looking for the devil in the details, so to speak, and the music's effortless, unassuming composition mirrors his effort. You could say it's a rare sign of growth on the capricious Nightmare, but maybe it's just Doldrums finding himself right where he needs to be.
