They've dubbed themselves Creep Show, and they call their second album Yawning Abyss, but I'm struggling to find a degree of tribulation in their sound. Instead, I'm witness to a discreetly lavish and claiming fertile sphere of experience- one that rests on a slowly turning horizon, a place where things could be worse, but they could be better as well, and even if the next rotation of this spinning local dumps us into a deeper, more impoverished depth of sunless desperation, it is acknowledged that there is still some virtue in soaking up the warmth and reprieve on offer today. I usually try to dip a toe in the mindset of the artist when I write about their work, but I can't say with much measure of conclusivity if I'm hitting close to the mark here. What I can tell you is that this analog synth-driven record has a pensive quality to many of its rhythmic segments, while the vocal performances, especially on "Yahtzee," can take on an intensely farcical quality, like the yodel of a dodo with a rubber sole. There are also times when the band seems to be setting the stage for something approximating an unglued theater performance, with a single character emerging as a protagonist to deliver an absurdist monologue, such as on "Bungalow," where mischievous and plastic strands of sonic, multicolored plaster-cast mold to the silhouette of a toothy crooner who psychic profile is that of a wolf posing as well-bred suburban accountant on his day off by the pool. Then there is "Matinee" which seems to follow some charmingly ugly creatures as it sweeps around the corridors of an underground auditorium, drinking in the shadows, while a fizzle of battery acid bubbles in its veins after drinking a martini prepared by an impetuous android whose badly in need of a tune-up and an attitude recalibration. Where I think the album coheres together most thematically and sonically is on the title track, "Yawning Abyss," wherein the titular chasm is revealed to be a pervasive, but inoffensive, even comforting, envoy of ennui, a setting where melodies fluctuate with a placating verve like the breeze through your hair on a mild summer day, and a pacifying prattle of synths pop and parish with delight like selzer bubbles quenching a parched palate. It may be the case that the title song is the pigment which colors my impressions of the entire record, but that's not a bad thing. Every record needs an entry point for the listener, and this one is mine. Besides, I really don't think there is anything wrong with enjoying the slow, steady, palliative qualities of the mundane when such quiet moments of reflection are on offer- even when it means that you're dancing on the crest of the literal/metaphorical apocalypse. I mean, if you're going to crash anyway, you might as well enjoy the ride, right?
