In Felt, Québécois krautrockers Suuns blend air raid sirens, saxophones and answering machine bleeps in an eerie album that trips you out without really getting anywhere.
Sensitively mixed by John Congleton – producer for St. Vincent – Felt contrasts rough and smooth, organic and artificial, distant and enveloping aural textures. It’s an album more concerned with thorough sonic exploration than emotional expression, and at times singer Ben Shemie vanishes right into the auto-tune. Each track presents the listener with a new auditory potpourri, throwing together clunking percussion with energetic, spiralling sax breaks, tinnitic ringing and showers of static.
Felt sometimes draws you into its dreamy rhapsody, but often is unfortunately numb, loopy and listless. ‘Look No Further’ evokes the outré swagger of early Gorillaz with its somnambulist drumbeat, whereas ‘Moonbeams’ just sounds like an ant scrabbling around on your eardrum for two minutes. Other tracks, like the droning ‘Baseline’, are reminiscent of the Dandy Warhols at their most aimless.
Looser and less confrontational than 2016’s Hold/Still, Felt is a deliberate break from Suuns’ personal tradition of hard, psychedelic-hued art punk. All non-collaborative Suuns albums have been genuinely exploratory projects, Felt included. Unfortunately, this expedition goes mainly in circles.
5.5
