The album is rousing and diverse, employing a staggering array of instruments and influences including folk, Afro-Pop, funk and rock. The exotic sounds of brass and wood keep company with electric and acoustic guitars, pots-and-pans percussion sits comfortably alongside Brenner’s grounded bass. In particular, Brenner’s tailored basslines add a more conversational presence on the album. Every sound has its place, every dissonant moment its own underlying unity.
w h o k i l l is cerebral and openly conversational, concerned with how society’s prominent forces shape individual desires, particularly the way that sexuality and violence become forcibly and irresistibly intertwined.
Garbus’s vocals are often indistinct, constituting a part of the sonic landscape. They add texture rather than depth, although the discernible lyrics tend to be incredibly powerful. Opener “My Country” merges synthesizer, horns, and rhythmic Afrobeat-inspired drumming with Garbus’s distinctive vocals, ranging from treble highs to hoarsely androgynous lows.
“Riotriot” narrates the union of violence and desire as the song’s speaker fantasizes about making love to the policeman who arrests her brother. Towards the end of the song Garbus explicitly articulates its central theme – “There is a freedom in violence I don’t understand/And like I’ve never felt before”. As a statement it’s directly relatable and thus psychologically rather troubling.
“Powa” addresses sex in its various ideological expressions: sex as power, sex as escape, as a site of gendered resistance, as a locus of anxiety. Sporadic bursts of electric guitar and bass underscore the urgency of desire in lines like “Baby bring me home to bed/I need you to press me down before my body flies away from me” and the even more overt “My man likes me from behind/Tell the truth, I never mind”.
My personal favourite is the buoyant “Gangsta”. It consciously emulates the sounds of the city; Garbus’s voice is distorted and looped to imitate sirens, accompanied by drumming on what sounds like an upended trash can.
The most overtly sinister track, “Wolly Wolly Gong”, is a lullaby that reminds us that our most cherished children’s songs are, themselves, pretty terrifying. The melody is hushed and sparse as a mother promises in vain to protect her sleeping infant as she waits for the day when “They” will come to “arm” her child.
On “Killa” Garbus sings, “I’m a new kinda woman … All my violence is here in the sound”. These lines suggest, to me, a possible resolution to the album’s many tensions and dissonances.
There is no escape from violence, but there is catharsis in its expression. The melting pot of instruments and styles that constitutes w h o k i l l, stirred into violent conflict, resolve themselves in their utterance. Garbus pours her violence into the music and packages it as a cautery that we, too, can apply to our wounds.
Pros: Everything
Cons: Nothing
NOMAG : 4.5 /5
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Buy the record on iTunes // Visit the band’s website here.
By Rebecca Hiscott
