Bassvictim don’t really like their new album. At least both vocalist Maria Manow and producer Ike Clateman still prefer their last LP, Forever, which they made in Norway, where the vibe was “beautifully cozy.” PEACE + WAR, on the other hand, took shape in Vietnam this past spring while Manow was sick and “getting quite fucked up,” she said in a recent interview, adding, “I cared less. I had a lot of anger there.” That attitude pervades the new album, which seeks to match the visceral weight of the duo’s previous efforts with a newfound sense of sprawl. It falters for various reasons: an overreliance on digital instrumentation, a disjointed flow that likely stems from Clateman handling all of the production, a haphazard aimlessness that contradicts the songs’ unusual polish. Still, it’s packed with radiant gems from start to finish, urging you to ride out its bumpy, feverish journey so that when Manow keeps singing ‘You Know How It Feels’ right before the end, you really do. It’s not always great, but that’s the point.
1. God I Wonder
We barely get ten seconds of aqueous ambience before the first blast of sky-splitting noise: “Hit the water, what the fuck are you assuming?” goes Manow’s opening confrontation. “Just because I’m ill doesn’t mean that I’m a loser.” Manow boils down the aggression in a lot of these songs to the illness that struck her in Vietnam, and it bleeds right through the first track.
2. Happysad
Bouncing between extremes has rarely sounded as warm and natural as it does on ‘Happysad’, where no amount of mental gymnastics is required to inhabit dichotomous states: skinny/fat, crazy/calm, stupid/smart. Over twee handclaps and tinny synths, the album’s first golden melody prompts Manow to place most of her emotion on the word so, as if the differences between each adjective are miniscule compared to their compounding weight, one that reflects the burden of Bassvictim’s newfound visibility.
3. 7 [feat. Fimiguerro]
Underground rapper Fimiguerro’s guest verses, while solid, have an odd way of underlining the duo’s flurry of disconnected ideas, effective as they can be in isolation. The four-to-the-floor pulse nods to a certain era of feature-driven chart pop, but it’s such a muddled recreation even Manow sounds frustrated by the results in the spoken word outro.
4. Charred Glass
A witchy instrumental that begins to give the album a sense of sprawl, but struggles to stretch beyond three minutes without falling short on ideas.
5. Girl Wars
The childlike jars with the warlike on one of the album’s most effectively discordant songs, marrying stabbing bass and irregular beats with “la la la”s and silly lyrics (I mean, “We mad that war is warlike”). More importantly, it channels the singer’s aggression into a kind of collective spirit.
6. Summer Song
Bassvictim work their effervescent magic on ‘Summer Song’, an infectious, nostalgic song awash in summertime imagery, even though you may not be able, or need, to catch any lyrics except for the final three words Manow sings hushedly, as if sore from running till the time runs out: “Right now, somehow, somehow.”
7. I Don’t Know
From “said my music’s mid” to “to me, your life is mid,” ‘I Don’t I Know’ is the rare Bassvictim song with a clear beginning, middle, and end, Manow’s diaristic verses set against a syrupy melody and interjected only by an M.I.A.-like chorus. “The days are now a haze,” she sings, without being consumed by it as in most of the record – which makes her bitter remarks taste all the more sweet.
8. Endings
After a strong run of tracks, ‘Endings’ feels rather forgettable and directionless, its skittering, restless rhythm not quite gelling with Manow’s vocals.
9. Who Told You
Crystal Castles is always the obvious reference point for this kind of music, but it’s more salient than usual on this track, which is more successful than the previous one in fusing its disjointed elements. Far removed from the torn self-acceptance of ‘Happysad’, ‘Who Told You’ takes the offense seriously (“Who told you that I go crazy?”) but doesn’t slip into madness until its eerily fractured outro.
10. Wake Up
To say that Manow is homesick on ‘Wake Up’ would be an understatement; a total sense of misdirection penetrates the track, which is the shortest on the album for a reason.
11. Mummy Dummy
A genuinely exuberant, fully-fleshed track is much needed at this point on the record; the wholesomeness of a line like “I feel proud of my mummy and my daddy” could only work in that context.
12. Jagódki (Blueberries)
Manow’s language often turns dreamier when she switches to Polish, and that much is true on the whimsical ‘Jagódki (Blueberries)’, a cover of Polish children’s folk song literally about blueberry characters living in a green forest. It’s not until the acapella outro that we hear the nursery rhyme unadorned, as jubilant as a lullaby can be.
13. Νο. 33 piano
A second meandering instrumental that, while well-placed in this fantasy land, drags out the record’s runtime. It lacks the tactile quality of Forever’s ‘Ike piano’.
14. War Song
When Manow sings “We have formed our own world,” the evidence is already abundant, delivered in short bursts like ‘War Song’ rather than grand statements. Once again rhythmically relentless, ‘War Song’ is knotty and simplistic in equal measure, dissolving into the thin air at the touch of a button.
15. Czerwone Jabłuszko
Finally a track whose components are fragmented without clashing, ‘Czerwone Jabłuszko’ foregrounds its references to Polish tradition while scabbing at its wicked melody, with strings doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
16. Go Faster
Manow’s voice isn’t meant to be naturally smooth, but you doubt its coarseness is an aesthetic choice in the verses; the whole song sounds like a rough draft.
17. White Flag
When it was released as a single – landing a spot in our best songs of October list – the expectation was that the entirety of PEACE + WAR would sound like ‘White Flag’. But it pulls off what so many tracks here lack: a tight balance between sugary hooks and a sense of abrasion. There’s room to breathe here, confrontational (in sound, if not concept) as the song is.
18. You Know How It Feels
The penultimate track isn’t a slow-burning climax so much as an all-too-literal at emotional steadiness; the titular line is repeated over otherworldly synths, and the beats, though unpredictable, have purposefully lost their bite. Maybe this is what truce sounds like after waving the white flag.
19. The End
“There’s no more words left to say,” Manow sings, stopping and starting as if fumbling for something more to say before conceding that simple truth. There’s a sense of weariness in her voice that resonates with the listener who’s sat through the whole album, which seeks to mirror, in part, the exhausting process of its creation. Bassvictim are happy to leave mistakes in; with the same kind of authenticity and a bit more quality control, they could have a masterpiece in their hands in no time.
