Like many dancefloor hits, Art Department's 2010 house anthem "Without You" was a simple idea, simply executed: gloriously uncomplicated snapping house percussion and a bassline that sounds like a sinking feeling, while over the top a ghastly corpse of a vocal (via member Kenny Glasgow) intones dully, "I don't know what to do without you/ I just can't make it without you." Glasgow sounds like an obsessive who's lost his grip on reality. Despite the emptiness it was a dancefloor favorite; perhaps dancers recognized its deep well of depression as the necessary flipside to all the good vibes, the dark outline that provides both definition and pathos to endlessly repeated big nights out.
Unfortunately, as is often the case when tunes become big off the back of their point of difference, discussions of "Without You" tend to focus on that slightly off-center vocal and the murderous bassline, understating Art Department's impeccable arrangement skills and, in particular, exacting sense of timing. Possibly Art Department (a Toronto-based duo of Glasgow and Jonny White) have listened too keenly to their own hype, as their debut album, The Drawing Board, leads off with two long-ass tunes dominated by dolorous basslines and Glasgow's morose, out-of-tune vocals. In particular, the aptly titled 10-minute-plus opener "Much Too Much" gambles that a miserablist refusal of excitement and intensity or, you know, something happening, will end up seeming evocative and atmospheric rather than half-hearted and aimless. The gamble succeeds only in part: These tracks work, but more in the sense of the listener understanding the concept rather than feeling it in their guts and hearts.
If you're someone who wants dance music to mean something, then these tracks may be the drawcard here, representing a kind of alternate reality where house vocalists like Robert Owens and Romanthony were more obsessed with the hollowness of Scott Walker's Climate of Hunter than the giddiness of Prince's 1999. And it is a great idea, but ultimately Art Department don't strike me as ideas people-- let alone songwriters-- first and foremost. They are, however, consummate arrangers, and The Drawing Board becomes immensely more involving each time the suicide tone poems take a step back and the arrangements a step forward. In terms of sheer groove, the album's easy pinnacle is "What Does It Sound Like?", whose hypnotic jacking is reminiscent of the debut albums of Motorbass and Fuckpony, each carefully sculpted component interlocking with each other in a satisfying display that Art Department can do mindless release fully as well as pent-up morbidity.
Three tracks capture the competing tensions at work: "Living the Life", on which Glasgow sounds unusually tuneful, the epic "Vampire Nightclub"-- which spends about two-thirds of its 10 minutes spiraling through shimmering synth oscillations and vocal samples-- and best of all, closer "ICU". That final track combines a squelching cowbell groove from "Living the Life" with the desperate desirousness of "Without You" to make something bigger and more affecting than either. Like a deep house version of the Smiths' "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out", both melodically and thematically, "ICU" understands that existential voids are always more compelling when kept off-screen, the singer and the listener's attention trained on the mirage of hopeless, obsessive romance. It's an emotional archetype house already knows full well, but rarely has it been articulated so well. Not surprisingly, Art Department are at their lachrymose best not when trying to uncover house's absences, but when redrawing ever more finely what was always already there.
