Anxiety

**The willingness for ostensibly ‘indie’ musicians to experiment with the sonic palettes of pop and R&B (with a concordant reverse) has been a movement in the ascendancy with each passing year of the new Millennium, with Dev Hynes and the Quin sisters perhaps the two most prominent figures at the threshold in the past year.**

Arthur Ashin (a.k.a. **Autre Ne Veut**) occupies similar avant-pop territory on his second LP _Anxiety_, frequently alighting upon the very breaking wake of a number of the most popular blogosphere sounds of the 2010s: **How To Dress Well**’s lo-fi soul, **Frank Ocean**’s post-modern resurrection of the ‘Minneapolis sound’, **Grimes**’ manic ADHD instrumentation, and even elements of cloud-rap production. It’s a record equally steeped in melodic pop-sensibility and itchy experimental texturisation, with the real stand-out feature being Ashin’s silky, supple falsetto, particularly when employed at its most stacked and harmonic with female accompaniment.

A number of the songs are quite brilliant. ‘Promises’ is a two-minute snippet of everything that Ashin does so well without wholly committing perhaps the best litmus test for new listeners to try on these sounds for size. Elsewhere, the pitch-shifts and children’s choir-esque backing vocals brilliantly build the epic tone of ‘Ego Free Sex Free’ until it completely soars by its final third. Best of all is ‘Play by Play’, perhaps one of the songs of the year. Tumbling into life and building up to a magnitudinous magnificence, it is rewarding to both immediate and invested listening.

The first half of the record is immensely listenable, with the instrumentation composed immaculately to build a rising tide of tension or emotion, which certainly gets hearts beating or feet moving (whichever is required). However, the latter half is often paced somewhat awkwardly, an issue which is occasioned by the a few musical missteps that unsettle tracks so frequently and intelligently flow-based. Momentum is lost with the comparatively minimalist, down-tempo ‘A Lie’ at the halfway point, and from here on out, where previous songs had felt so essential, closers ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ and ‘World War’ – for all the space allowed to them – fail to lead into anywhere particularly fresh or captivating to the ear. They seem to lack the emotional weight of contemporaries records like _Total Loss_, with the ultimate result that although they are still sophisticated and well-performed, they simply aren’t as memorable or interesting as the singles.

In short, there’s undoubtedly a fairly spectacular EP bequeathed to us here, heralded by a song which I’ll treasure for the rest of the year, amidst a record that promises so much. There’s proficiency by the spade-load, and it’s only let down by an increasing lack of that certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ as the record progresses, hindering some of the tracks’ ability to fully explode into life. This does lead me to the reflection that perhaps it is my all-consuming greed as a listener, rather than any overt failing, that led to the sensation of disappointed hope for more moments of the same immense satisfaction.

**Similar To:** How To Dress Well, Active Child, Frank Ocean

**MP3:** ‘Play By Play’, ‘Warning’