Expression and Association through Experimentation
Efrim Manuel Menuck released his second solo album, Pissing Stars, on Quebec’s Constellation Records in early February. It followed his solo debut album, Plays “High Gospel”, which was released in mid-2011. His solo efforts followed a prosperous career with Canadian experimental/post-rock group Godspeed You! Black Emperor, who introduced their unique and instrumentation-focused approach to music with their debut album, F♯ A♯ ∞. The ominous album was received with critical acclaim for its strange samples and intricate noises, accompanied by the instrumentation of the band. Other associated acts that Menuck and many other Godspeed You! Black Emperor members have partaken in include A Silver Mt. Zion and Fly Pan Am.
Menuck explains that this album was based on “the brief romance” of Mary Hart and Mohammed Khashoggi, an unlikely pairing of a beautiful and blonde television presenter and the son of a Saudi arms dealer. After mulling after the odd and alluring couple for decades, he felt compelled and inspired to craft his new album based on the couple. The result is never overt nor predictable but rather delves into the emotions that Menuck interpreted from his own individual associations and thoughts around this couple. The song “Hart_Hashoggi” best embodies this, as it combines an atmospheric buzz with squeals of reverb that eventually morph into a melody of some sorts. Like the rest of Pissing Stars, “Hart_Hashoggi” is ominous and gritty, but its lighter noises are blissful and climactic. Though Menuck never knew the couple personally, the song shows how easily the mind can travel to create its own stories and feelings by projecting itself onto whatever infatuation it has taken on.
Menuck builds upon some of his experimental history from Godspeed You! Black Emperor to bring to his solo work. The droning and noisiness of “Static” from the band’s 2000 LP, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, is one of the deep cuts from Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s catalog that is closest to Menuck’s work now. Though his albums are no longer contained by three or four lengthy tracks, he still maintains the same sense of evolution and flow as the tracks blend into one another. “The Lion-Daggers of Calais” and its soft, yet menacing drone ends in an electronic blaze that continues seamlessly into “Kills v. Lies.” The aguishly languid build-up in “The Lion-Daggers of Calais” and its instrumental-only nature are the guide that pushes listeners into the chilling sample at the center-point of “Kills v. Lies.” Here, Menuck places a chopped-up interview of Sandra Good, a Manson family devotee. The segments of the interview are taken just enough out of context that it leaves the listener feeling disoriented, a feeling that is amplified to the max by the sour electronic drone beeping along in the atmosphere.
Though Menuck never shies away from including instrumental tracks that form as slowly and surely as a gloomy storm would, Menuck also does not shy away from the microphone nor the journal. His lyrics are cryptic but never vague, creating surreal imagery in every song that they are featured in. On “LxOxVx / Shelter in Place,” Menuck bares his heart about sexuality and the masochism that is intertwined with it. His soft voice complements the mid-toned droning that eventually morphs from an ambient noise to a complete screech that is somehow also harmonized, effectively representing the pleasure and pain through the cacophonous euphoria of the instrumental. The following track, “The Beauty of Children and the War Against the Poor,” features Menuck’s singing once again, but in a completely different result. This time around, his soft voice matches the softness of the deep piano notes and the twinkling akin to a music box melody chopped and scattered across the song. The song is tender even though it discusses a dystopian world where its inhabitants can only be liberated after death.
By the time the title track appears to close out the album, Menuck enlists the strengths that he displayed all throughout Pissing Stars to end on a bright and beautiful note. Gentle electronic percussion and a simple electric guitar melody are interlaced with a ringing that is almost melodic. Menuck’s best vocal melody of the entire album finally arrives as he croons about both sexual and emotional desire. The phrase “Pissing Stars” may be a euphemism or may be symbolic or may just be crude, but it is not in Menuck’s character to be bogged down by the details and explain. Instead, he lets the music speak for itself, and just as he created his own emotional links with Hart and Khashoggi, we can expect to do the same for Pissing Stars.
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