Alt-J: Relaxer Review

 

One of the most comforting things about Alt-J is that they'll always be content playing in their toybox. Every song is filled with weird noises, slapped-together lyrics, and genre mashups that play like children do with a toybox of random dolls and army men. This does mean that Alt-J have been going back to the same musical stylings they have visited for three albums now, but there is a lot of life left in these toys. They found what they like about music and have yet to find a reason to change how they make it.

Not everything on Ralaxer is to my liking, and even that is par for the course. When you're as broad-toned as this trio is, you're bound to piss people off with at least one song, after all. I've never been a fan of Matilda from their debut album, but I've heard some people call it their best song by far. Both opinions don't seem to matter much to the group, as it's even difficult to tell whether they're getting better, getting worse, or just....changing. What feedback could they possibly be taking? Who could even try offering any? Nobody can criticize what you're doing if nobody knows what you're doing.

Maybe the biggest progression that comes with this record is an actual sense of cohesion. They've always been a band to surprise you with what's coming next, and the surprise here might just be that everything sounds weirdly natural together. Nothing has a whip-smack changeup like Every Other Freckle had, and there's nothing as unsettling as Intro was with such distorted vocals. In Cold Blood moves from rock to gridiron band to proggy synths without feeling jarring at all. I'm as surprised as you might be. Deadcrush leans into the nasal tendencies of frontman Joe Newman with an equally head-cold bassline; it's steamy and satisfying, but it's not disjointed.

I'd also call this their calmest set of songs overall, which weirdly is saying something; for all the weird stuff you hear on an Alt-J LP, it's never quite as energetic as you remember it being. Their knack for sweeping you up in emotional-yet-somber peacefulness has often needed the weirdness to hold attention; it's nice that they can play House of the Rising Sun and Pleader with those crutches dropped. There's a sense of catharsis within these tracks, and it's rare you find that catharsis displayed so purely as it is here.

The calmness does become overpowering, though, and that ends up being the undoing. The quietness in their previous albums acted as a welcome respite from the more uptempo numbers, and it gave them more emotional heft. Pleader and House of the Rising Sun have enough meat on their bones to not be affected by this, but that's not the case for Last Year, 3WW, or even Adeline. When there's only 8 tracks, 4 of which drag past the 5 minute mark....that catharsis and calmness begins to feel like listlessness. Hit Me Like That Snare doesn't help their case either, as it can't seem to get out of a rut until it just ends with a childish and explicit chant.

These worries are hard to put aside, and combined they tell a tale of a band phoning it in. And yet I still like this album. It's got that signature Alt-J sound, and that can pave over a lot of faults, apparently. I don't feel like the well has run dry for them--I just think maybe they aren't making use of all the talents they have this time around. Maybe this was all extremely intentional, as that's just the toys they wanted to play with this time. Hey, at least they aren't as graphically explicit this time.

7/10