When Calgarian siblings Patrick and Matt Flegel dissolved their beloved indie-rock band Women in 2012, they effectively mined its components like a couple divvying up their assets after a divorce. Patrick imported Women’s uncanny sense of melody into the phantasmagoric pop project Cindy Lee; Matt and fellow Women exile Mike Wallace repurposed the group’s foundation of dissonance and drone for their new band, which would come to be known as Preoccupations. A decade on from their caustic and confrontational early recordings, Preoccupations have evolved in much the same fashion as their post-punk forebears did at the dawn of the 1980s, when the nascent MTV airwaves were filled with former DIY denizens angling for their close-ups. Preoccupations’ fifth album reaffirms what ’80s kids raised on the Psychedelic Furs, Echo and the Bunnymen, and a steady diet of made-for-TV nuclear-disaster movies internalized long ago: Post-punk is pop music, perhaps the only kind that makes sense in a world inching toward apocalypse.
Ill at ease is hardly a thematic stretch for a band whose catalog already includes “Anxiety,” “Pointless Experience,” and “Death.” But this time, Preoccupations express mental anguish and world-weary fatalism with more graceful gestures and, at times, genuine jubilation. The first sound we hear on the album is a frantic door-knocking that feels both ominous and exuberant, and the song that follows, ”Focus,” continues to skate that fine line: While the gate-crashing rhythm matches the distressed, psychoanalytical tenor of Flegel’s lyrics, the mood is brightened considerably by a buoyant chorus hook and a B-52’s-style female backing vocal that lifts the song to ecstatic heights that Flegel’s sandpapery voice wouldn’t reach on its own.
As Flegel’s words turn bleaker, the album’s mood turns brighter. “I think we’re ready for the asteroid,” he sings over sanguine motorik synth-pop of “Bastards.” “Andromeda” has him wishing the Earth would hasten its inevitable collision with the titular galaxy, yet it’s an iridescent rocker that suggests Interpol blazing down a Southern California freeway, capped by a soothing synth line from Scott Munro that beams like the sun over the horizon. The ever-present tension between Ill at ease’s grim lyrics and grand designs isn’t being milked for irony; it foregrounds a sense of humanity and romance in a world that threatens to turn our hearts to stone. “I can’t believe the apocalypse is taking so long,” Flegel seethes during the strobe-lit, Depeche Mode-esque chorus of “Sken,” before making a poignant pledge: “You’re the only thing that’s keeping me calm.” By Preoccupations’ cynical standards, that practically counts as a love song.
Even when put up against the vintage-R.E.M. verve of their 2022 single “Ricochet,” Ill at ease is a surprisingly streamlined showcase of Preoccupations’ songwriting in the absence of their obfuscating experimentation and counterintuitive rhythmic shocks. But in those moments when the band slows down and stretches out, you start to long for that frenetic, combustible energy. Perhaps the title track could acquire the stage-stomping gusto of a U2 anthem in a live setting, but as it stands, the steady-to-a-fault beat feels a bit like you’re fist-pumping from the couch, and the song doesn’t generate quite enough heat to earn its extended ambient comedown coda. And while there’s a feisty goth-cabaret spirit lurking within the frosty synthscapes of “Retrograde,” the execution is too sluggish to fully exploit it.
The best gauge of Preoccupations’ growth comes in the song that most readily recalls their art-punk origins. “Panic” is not a Smiths cover, though it lives up to its title with an opening flurry from guitarist Daniel Christiansen that echoes the oscillating electronic intro to the band’s 2015 signature “March of Progress.” But where that dichotomous track erected a deceptively foreboding gateway into a skewed psychedelic sing-along, “Panic” uses its pulsating undercurrent to initiate a mercurial mix of industrial clamor, whimsical prog-pop, bass-popping Can grooves, and Moroderized future-disco. Of course, even this irrepressibly vibrant song is awash in sullen sentiment: “I can’t repeat today,” Flegel sighs, “I’m just injecting fallen angels’ dust.” But the musical and emotional strides on Ill at ease suggest that pessimism is the mother of invention.
