recently my buddy Lauren put out a new album. It's no secret I love his music and his band Chodus. I've written about them before. I made a Facebook post about how much I loved the new album A Clown Who Lost the Circus. And boy did I love it. In that post I said that if I wished I could write a review for a publication of the new album. And then I remembered that I have this blog, so here it goes.
There's a magic to what Lauren does that I can't talk about enough. He's the hero in music we all wish we had growing up, or at least I do, and to the extent that I am still growing up, I am glad he's around. He does what he does. No apologies and no back steps. I always appreciate someone who wears their heart on their sleeve and isn't afraid to dress down and yell about it. The thing with Lauren, and the other players in Chodus (Jake and Jason), they aren't just raw and effective. they are good. the songs take dips and dives. His guitar playing is mesmerizing. He painted the tracks on this one with ambiance. reversed wooshings and synthy wiggles. He plays with electronics and drum machines like I haven't heard from him before. The first track, an album highlight for sure, "Salenthropus Tchadelehensis" opens with strange vacuous sounds and rolls into a woozy spread of modulated and reversed guitars. its a divine opening track. no lie, divine. these songs are heart openers. they split you open, let all this light come in. His songs are like old friends that know where you keep the spare key. they just come in. the guitar solos don't hurt either.
I have some deep associations with this music, with Lauren's music. Perhaps a journalist would call them biases. Me and Lauren both come from New Hampshire. Similar towns at that. His music always reminds me of New Hampshire, feels like almost it couldn't have been made outside of our state. I don't have a handle completely on this idea, though I have been contemplating what New Hampshire music could mean. If there's a starting point I am pretty sure it's Chodus. its weirdo woods music. the sound of hills and trees and not having journalists and A and R's lurking around and being extremely creative and young and having to build it all yourself. I am sure there's more too it, and that describes a lot of places without intense 'industry infrastructure'. This record reminds me of home. and it reminds me of my dad.
Do I like every song on this record, probably not. though the more I listen, the more I find a value in all of them. "I Do Not", a song about a secret underwater Nazi base, indulges in a humor that isn't so much my cup of tea. Secret Shopper is a ragged garage freak-out follow up to the serene opener, a sequencing decision that was not my favorite. it's all still radical. for whatever detraction or critique I could levy here, the good songs are so good that nothing else really matters. the sonics, the song craft, the places he goes where he had not gone before. Too fucking good.
Now a lot of these projects are the brainchild of Lauren cooking these records up in his basement, recording and producing them himself. So it is hard to avoid putting him under the spotlight... to a certain extent I don't want to avoid that. Clown certainly didn't sound much like the proper Chodus studio album that came before it, or the Lauren centered basement album before that Happs B.
In a lot of ways it sounds like a fusion of both. On Clown Lauren manages to get a robust and full sound out of his basement studio, much like Dark Web, so not only are the songs good, this is a beautiful sounding record, those ambient and experimental flourishes mixed in beautifully with the guitars and percussion. And hey if there are rough edges, its all part of the experience. Throughout the Chodus catalog they often rerecord older songs. It creates a wonderful fossil record of where the project is at creatively. If you've listened to a Chodus project before you'll be familiar with this one. You'll already know how great this is.
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