Earlier this week marked the release of Suuns’ second full-length release, Images Du Futur. The Montreal-based minimalist experimental drone band who has become known for their slow burning tension-filled compositions caught my attention when I saw them open for Land of Talk a few years ago, and they’ve proved to be a strong headliner, and band to watch in general. The things this band is capable of is scary good. It’s the kind of music that can be pure visceral if that’s all you want, but it can also be quite mental if you let it.
This new collection of 10 songs just over 45 minutes is like a dark adventure through a stark, shadowy unnamable terrain. The video for first single “Edie’s Dream” effectively translates this, following a young girl through a somewhat bleak, yet thickly atmospheric forest (of her mind?). This is pretty telling of what to expect of the rest of the tracks on the album, to varying degrees. There’s this running theme of less is more until the exact right moment, along with a feeling of being surrounded by shadows in a foggy mist. Right from the get go with album opener “Powers of Ten,” we have the droning guitar riffs repeating, and then pierced with Vocalist Ben Shemie’s mostly incomprehensible, anxious voice. The sounds are the shade, the cloudy veil that darkens things to the point of obscurement, but like a classic Hitchcock film you know just enough to be slightly on edge and in suspense of the unknown. The vocals are the emotions; expressing nervousness, anxiety, anger, sometimes sounding wide-eyed and other sneering or menacing.
It’s all around, engulfing you and filling you with adrenaline, like on “2020,” where Shemie’s vocals sound extremely similar to the band Clinic, but like they’re gone more off the deep end. The drums are like a heartbeat and the eerily descending guitar line is the fall down the rabbit hole. The feeling is something like through a haunted house, being scared for laughs. Shemie’s emphasizing of consonants in his words is perfectly jarring, and combined with the screeching guitar strings like nails on a chalkboard, begin to provoke the feeling of getting away with something good. It’s the moment when you know you’ve gotten away with the most mischievous crime in history, and you’ve outsmarted everyone.
There are moments of respite, such as on “Minor Work,” but even their bliss is tinged with uncertainty, like the hot air balloon you’ve made your escape in, floating away from the town, is about to explode. But the feeling is more the notion of the ecstasy being in the agony. The same things you love are the same things you hate. When Shemie is repeating “These same visions…” in “Edie’s Dream,” It feels like saying you can never be free. No matter what, entrapment lies behind everything, and the beauty is in the ways we find to escape. It’s a constant climbing, a battle that is never won, but we can take it. Revel in it. When the bass line drops in “Sunspot” it hits so good, like an arrow through the heart, and that’s all that matters in that moment.
Even when Suuns is soft, they’re strong. In “Bambi” they meticulously craft this intimate electronic backdrop that builds into resonating, then pounding, then driving. Or the faint vocal percussives in “Edie’s Dream” if you listen close enough. There’s always motion, movement forward, pressing on, pressing through the shadows. On the other side? More shadows. The title track is an instrumental that paint of portrait of another barren dreamscape, but with a comfort in contrast that wants to lull you into submission. Just when you think it’s safe to sleep, “Music Won’t Save You” creeps back in to remind you of where you really are. Much in the way Radiohead uses what is arguably the creepiest use of a clap in their song “We Suck Young Blood,” Suuns employs what can now arguably be the creepiest use of a laugh track on a tune.
After seeing what Suuns sees in Images Du Futur, or at least what they can provoke, it feels best just to let it. Let the unknown overtake you, envelop you, because it might feel better than you think if you embrace it. Even if you don’t understand it – especially if you don’t understand it. Be nervous and wide-eyed. Revel in it.
Images Du Futur is out now, online and in stores, and there’s plenty of tour dates to back it all up.
