Annie Clark’s follow-up to 2021’s 70s-inspired Daddy’s Home is a striking, stylish self-produced LP, with a rawer, starker edge, fierce guitars, a theme of characters pushed between their true selves and how they’re perceived, an includes guests Dave Grohl and Cate Le Bon. From the opener, Hell Is Near, there’s a sense of foreboding. On the next, Reckless, a slow, menacing, simmering number there’s the impending danger of “cracking up” and “they’re coming for me” as crashing sounds and electronica come to a rising crescendo. On the standout single Broken Man sthe narrator protagonist is bullish and swaggering (“what are you looking at?), until they too are cracking up as guitars come in like thunderclaps amid what feels like a dark funk version of Prince’s Kiss. The next extended metaphor, Flea, a lavish rock number featuring Dave Grohl on drums, and Clark’s great guitar riffs, is about the sort of user-type person who is “Jumping on somebody's warm body / When you start to itch and scratch and scream / Once I'm in, you can't get rid of me” ... and “Look at you and all I see is meat.” Big Time Nothing is fuzzy, catchy funk number with another dash of more Prince, Madonna, among her later influences such as Tori Amos, Frank Zappa, and Nine Inch Nails. And so the rest of the album continues, with fabulous numbers from the brass stabs and dramatic vocal delivery of Violent Times, which could be a searing Bond theme, to the final title track, an eclectic track featuring old friend Cate Le Bon, one that sums up internal turbulence. All aflame with further brilliance, another fabulous release by a very classy artist. Out on Total Pleasure Records.
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