The new album from Montreal’s Majical Cloudz is a masterwork of minimalism. After some variable recordings that set Devon Welsh’s vocal up against too many competing elements, the recent Turns Turns Turns EP has set the tone for the duo’s second full-length album, Impersonator.
The way the vocal is shoved to the front of the mix is confronting and even initially off-putting. Welsh throws himself naked into the spotlight, constantly questioning himself with an often uncomfortable openness. He starts the album with his mask up and declaring falsehood (“I’m a liar, I make music”), but then the layers are slowly peeled back, his dark stories told through shadowy childhood memories.
Although the onus seems to be on Welsh’s centralized vocal to riff on the bare bones laid down by collaborator Matthew Otto, the instrumentalist has a key role in the effectiveness of their music. The songs don’t build, they simmer, so a little patience is required to see through a bunch of compositions without much of a pay-off. Halfway through the album, pattering beats emerge in the comparatively cluttered Mister, as if suggesting a continuing increase in tempo and density. Instead, Turns Turns Turns spins on a drowsy, hypnotic loop and paves the way for even more pared-back tracks to close the album.
Impersonator is an immersive work that holds you at close quarters and then forces you engage by stripping away anything that could cause too much of a distraction.
BY CHRIS GIRDLER
Best Track: This Is Magic
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: Smother WILD BEASTS, Calling Out Of Context ARTHUR RUSSELL
In A Word: Sparse
