Warpaint: City of Angels (2)

Blog confessional... 

I actually started working on a post about Warpaint back last year with the aim of tying it in to both the post on the Dum Dum Girls and Warpaint's new album. However - "stuff" - primarily the day job (which ultimately funds my music and gigging habit) got in the way...

This week LA four-piece Warpaint released their eagerly awaited follow-up to 2010's "The Fool". For a band that are celebrating their 10th anniversary this year, its perhaps hard to believe that their eponymous album, will only be their second. 

Profligate these ladies are not.

Then again, here is a band - founded by friends Theresa Wayman (vocals, guitar), Emily Kokal (vocals, guitar), and sisters Shannyn Sossamon (drums) and  Jenny Lee Lindberg (bass, backing vocals) - back in 2004 (current  drummer Stella Mozgawa joined in 2009 as Sossamon carved out an acting career - whe're talking L.A. here, so Hollyweird is just down the road) - that doesn't compromise on or confuse quality with quantity... 

Consider the song that introduced me to the band, the mesmeric "Billie Holiday", from their self-funded 2008 "Exquisite Corpse" EP. It's a beautifully nostalgic song which flows seamlessly in and out of the Smokey Robinson penned and Mary Wells performed Motown classic "My Guy" so expertly that you'd swear the two songs were conjoined twins...

Indeed, "Exquisite" sums up the EP perfectly - it's a heady, dreamy, restless collection of beautifully crafted songs that paint vivid aural dreamscapes married to Kokal's angelic-like vocals, muddied West Coast guitar and the fusion of percussion and bass... And then there's always something unexpected - one minute you're being lulled into a false sense of security and then you're hit by crescendos of reverbed guitar, gothic snarl, haunting breaks and atmospheric menace...   

Warpaint's 2010's debut album, "The Fool", is probably best known for the single "Undertow" - a song that floated a thousand blogs - and which to this day still the most totally gorgeous, fresh and perfect of songs... 

In an interview for Q-Magazine, the band described the album as the EP's "older sister." Indeed, the album initially builds on the familiar structures of "Exquisite Corpse" with that solid beats, omnipresent but never overpowering; dreamy, trance-like melodies but with just that trademark hint of darker menace... But compared to the EP, the sound has an even more expansive feel; there's a tangible assuredness and maturity   that enable the band to explore and push the musical boundaries... And then - as if daring the listener not to have learnt from the band's debut - there's the country and folk guitars, piano interludes, jolting Banshees-fuelled rifts, hypnotic, pounding drum beats and unnerving silences... 

"The Fool" is an album that demands - deserves - attention. Only half-listen and you miss out on all those nuances and attention to detail - the way that the band continually push and pull - not only with structure - but at the sensibilities and expectations of the listener.

"Warpaint"

It takes Warpaint about 15 seconds of the aptly named opening track, "Intro", to sum up this album...  

There's a sparse wave of droning guitar over which Stella Mozgawa is starting to pound out a beat... but no sooner started its blown. There's an apology, a count back in...  but the band continues as if this error was un-noticed... Lindberg radars in on the groove while Kokal and Wayman's complementary guitar styles fill in the gaps... 

It's not obvious whether the blown start is an accident or whether it’s deliberate, but what I suspect is that the band don’t care. And that’s the whole point of the album – this is a band that is more than confident enough to strike out however they want...

"Intro" sounds like a deliberately low-key, atmospheric, jam, but it segues seamlessly into "Keep it healthy", Kokal's effortless, ethereal and dreamy vocals held together by the frighteningly telepathic workings of Mozgawa and Lindberg (It's important to emphasis how crucial this duo are to the band's ever evolving sound...) The track also alludes to the comforting progression from the past as was so evident in the transition from "Exquisite Corpse" to "The Fool."

Indeed, "Love is to die", while an obvious single (and I'm not convinced that the band are or want to be classified as a singles band) is still very much a Warpaint song - solid percussion, floating guitar and dreamy vocals, with a great middle-eight that drops the tempo just a notch - but... When the chorus kicks-in - with perhaps the band's strongest hook since "Undertow" - you just want to be driving through L.A. and flicking through the myriad of radio stations here - just in the hope of finding the song again.

"Biggy" is probably the first inkling that there are some subtle (and not so subtle) changes going amongst the complex structures and aural landscapes... It's a memorising yet eerie and trance-like number. Deep (as in rib-cage kicking) droning guitar, synthesisers and drum - its hypnotically slow, driving at its own pace until about two-thirds through when it lifts and soars (in both range and tempo) before drifting off accompanied by just a few bars of piano.

But it is when "Disco//very" fires up that the band demand your attention. This song jars - deliberately so. It's a pulsating dance anthem (or as close as the band have ever gotten). The beat is hypnotic; bass and guitar swirl, vocals on edge... It sounds like no other Warpaint song... It's provocative and challenging... in short its the kind of brilliant musical masterpiece that you expect the band to surprise you with...

To ram home this unpredictableness, the band close out the album with a ballad. "Son" is a beautifully constructed song - Kokal's vocals reverbed and layered over a simple piano... there's subtle chord change, soft guitars and angelic harmonies. It's the perfect track to end with... an opportunity to decompress and take stock of everything that's gone before.

"Warpaint" is in many ways a difficult album, it demanding of your full attention from the very beginning. But the chances are you already know this and - if like me - you've been enraptured by everything before then you are going to love this album. It truly encapsulates everything about the band - their unwillingness to compromise or play safe; to not rest on their laurels, but to keep pushing and expanding their musical horizon...
 
There aren't enough superlatives available in the English language that even go close to describing how good "Warpaint" (the album) or Warpaint (the band) are. This album is a veritable masterpiece from a band totally in control of their game.

Warpaint Website
Warpaint on SoundCloud
"Warpaint" (iTunes), (Amazon), (7Digital)