Engine

Tracks:
1. Stablemate
2. A Sucker’s Evening
3. Arise, Therefore
4. You Have Cum In Your Hair and Your Dick Is Hanging Out
5. Kid of Harith
6. The Sun Highlights the Lack in Each
7. No Gold Digger
8. Disorder
9. A Group of Women
10. Give Me Children
11. The Weaker Soldier

Credits:
David Grubbs – piano, organ
Ned Oldham – bass, effected guitar, additional singing
Will Oldham – singing, electric guitar
Maya Tone – drums, percussion

Recorded by Steve Albini

Released by Drag City

In this case you can judge the album by its cover. The stark, half-done line drawing of a riverside wooden mill sits below red block letters that read ARISE THEREFORE like a command or a warning. It suggests isolation amidst beauty, unfinished business and dark, bloody secrets. This album is full of those things.

Musically this album is distinguished from other Oldham albums by the presence of Maya Tone, who is a drum machine that provides all of the percussion, and David Grubbs on the keys, always inching the songs towards avant garde jazz territory. But he never gets too far because Maya pounds forward with repetitive beats and Will’s brother Ned rounds out a typically pounding Albini-produced rhythm section. Sometimes the songs plod and sometimes they swing. It’s up to Maya. Will sings softly most of the time; usually full of remorse or disgust. The overall effect on the listener is hypnotic and somewhat creepy. Arise Therefore is bleak and disturbing but comfortable, like how a murderer might feel when things are, despite everything, generally going alright.

This album is a move away from the rock-n-roll of Viva Last Blues and into a new territory where his characters are morose and guilty. ‘Stablemate’ opens the album with a scathing rebuke of a woman who is stupid and indifferent enough to not realize that he is leaving her – tonight. She just sleeps through it, the bitch. This is followed by a downright evil tune, ‘A Sucker’s Evening’. The sucker, in this case, is a strong man who messed with the wrong man (more likely with his woman). The protagonist and his friend have some horrifying plans for him. The mood lightens a bit on the next song, the title track, in which more dirty deeds are hinted at but the music and the mood are cheerful. You can dance around a bit to a song that may be about something gruesome. The next song is listed as ‘You Have Cum (…)’ on the cover but the full name is written in the insert as ‘you have cum in your hair and your dick is hanging out’. It seems to be a song about a sexual encounter that is secondary to a larger issue in the participants’ life. As usual it is sung from the point of view of a man who may have an Antisocial Personality Disorder. He says “if god could make me cry / I’d run along the water” while his mind seems to be on something more sinister. Maya Tone kicks it up several notches on ‘Kid of Harith’ by featuring a relatively fast and complex beat, complete with cymbal sounds. ‘The Sun Highlights the Lack In Each’ is as soulful as Will gets on this album. This version of soul just happens to include off-key yelps and high pitched moans; it’s still soulful as hell. Like all good American soul, it is about dark subject matter. Here, it is rumination on how being outdoors in the daytime with your friends makes it all the more clear to you what awful people they are. ‘No Gold Digger’ is a story told by a man who had some money stolen from him by a woman as she thought he slept. That bitch is dead now but the story has a happy ending. The dead girl is nothing like the one lying next to him tonight. He knows this one won’t steal from him. She’s no gold digger. ‘Disorder’ is not an admission of mental problems. Well, maybe it is but it is also a description of how this life can make sense. All things live and die and are renewed. There will always be a new woman to fuck and to fuck over. It is the natural rhythm of life.

Despite the insane genius that I have just described, the album is not great because of the literary heights that Will Oldham reaches here. The greatness comes from the way the album sounds. It is sparse, cold, and loose but still envelopes you with emotion. Albini's production places all musical elements on equal footing and makes sure that each one sounds crisp and clear while Grubbs adds en existential element with his piano. Arise Therefore is an album about an earthly paradise. It is a place where the sinner can feel safe here and now.

9.6/10