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Album review: 'Pissing Stars' by Efrim Manuel Menuck
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‘Pissing Stars’ by Efrim Manuel Menuck (Efrim Manuel Menuck/File)
A
decidedly more somber record than its predecessor, Canadian musician Efrim Manuel Menuck’s second solo album Pissing Stars isn’t an album to lift moods.
There are glimmers of hopefulness, bliss and romance peppered through, but the overall nuance is that of defeat, anger and fear. The music buzzes and drones with cavernous instruments and Menuck’s high-pitched vocals echoing in prayer-like hopefulness.
As the most-visible leader in the highly influential and — highly political — instrumental band Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Menuck’s socio-political emotionality has always been at the forefront of his art. But where Godspeed’s (as well as his other band, Silver Mount Zion) records often railed against evil powers that not everyone “saw”, the current climate makes it rather impossible not to catch the fear in the eyes of Pissing Stars.
It is a reflective album that is about the reflective prowess of children, about the bliss and beauty of their innocence and about the primal parental instinct that leads to pure unadulterated anger and fear, as well as glimmers of hope and light. The reflective nuance is a protective one; it is a soundtrack to feeling absolutely terrified and fighting back with the whole of you. As such, the record’s combination of hummed vocals, processed drones and electrical static is a challenging and even discomforting experience at times.
In a press release, Menuck notes of a world in eternal collapse, referencing “fires everywhere” with “everything drained of meaning”, but he also likens it to “running towards a cliff with two swinging knives, roaring with an idiot grin. Overcome and overjoyed”.
It is about “the dissolution of the state, and all of us trapped beneath and the way that certain stubborn lights endure”. The tracks evoke these, but they reflect the darkness before the “stubborn lights” a little clearer, making the moments where joy do come through feel like fresh air after holding your breath underwater for too long.
The record is inspired by a story Menuck read as a youngster about the short and surprising romantic affair between Entertainment Tonight host Mary Hart and Mohammed Khashoggi, who also happened to be the son of a Saudi arms dealer. Like the way he mentions “stubborn lights” enduring, Menuck’s fascination over the story seems to focus on the way it eventually dissolved and the way some lights remained in its dissolution.
As he notes: “This record is about the end of love and the beginning of love.”
Tracks like the opener “Black Flags Ov Thee Holy Sonne” (which features the voice of Menuck’s son) and “The State and Its Love and Genoicide” have Menuck singing over mutating drones. They both begin with a rumbling menace that is gradually joined by other noises, some affected instruments and some processed unfamiliar sounds that buzz and hiss into shape, eventually leading to a careful crescendo of sorts. Whether those endings represent the light after the dark, or whether it’s the other way around is unknown. But these dramatic mood changes are evident throughout the record.
“The Beauty of Children and the War Against the Poor” tackles all these head on. A disquieting hushed start leads to a choir-like victorious crescendo. One of the strongest track on the record, its crescendoing momentum also makes it one of the most visceral, and thus accessible, tracks here.
But the album is not all dynamic mood shifts. “Kills v. Lies” is a short instrumental track with a sample of a women speaking of “a lot of killing”, while “A Lamb in the Land of Payday Loans” comes close to feeling celebratory, reminiscent of Silver Mount Zion’s lighter moments (even if the title may not reflect it as such).
The central love story that inspired Menuck doesn’t make itself apparent. The song “Hart_Kashoggi” is driven by high-pitched buzzing and soft drones alongside heavily-processed vocals that almost sound like the cries of a drowning person. It isn’t particularly clear which part of the romance the song is inspired by.
A record of precise, unwavering emotionality, Pissing Stars is artistically sound but audibly a difficult listen. There is a beautiful celebration trying to crawl its way out of the doom, but crawling through the darkness to make out that light won’t always feel so easy.
