If we’ve learned anything about in the last ten years, it’s that they take their time. Since forming in 2004, Warpaint has only released one EP and one LP, 2010’s “The Fool,” an enigmatic debut that merited countless melancholic music fans to set Google alerts for the band.
That patience goes double once you turn on one of their records. Warpaint songs kick up like a cloud of dust in the desert. Lone guitar strings wander in over half a minute, bolstered soon after by a heavy drums and singer Emily Kokal’s spacey meditations. Once the tone is set, a song is equally likely to swirl into another tempo as hang there until it’s run its course before fading away.
Warpaint’s self-titled sophomore effort is as spectral and atmospheric as we’ve come to expect from the L.A.-based band. The album kicks off, for example, with “Intro,” a two-minute chunk of warm-up that serves as an opener for the excellent “Keep It Healthy” as much as a rubric for what to expect from the band. Non-traditional song structures abound on the album. “Teese” experiments with a few different choruses, while the -evoking “Biggy” forgoes them altogether.
“Warpaint” also has the band adding welcome ballast to their body of work. “Disco//Very” is the most dance-forward track the band has committed to tape—albeit a damn moody one (“Don’t you battle / we’ll kill you / rip you up and tear you in two”). “Hi”‘s wispy vocals are grounded by two chunky drum rhythms, one drum-machine hip-hop, the other speed-jazz. Album-prerelease is as tight as it gets. Pithy and refreshingly self-aware (“It’s not necessary to be so dark”), it’s the closest thing Warpaint has to a viable single in the world at large, and the album’s easiest highlight.
For all its virtues, “Warpaint” drags some in its dying tracks. “CC” stretches the one-note bassline from “Feeling Alright” to unwelcome lengths, execrated by the fact that all the instruments and vocals sound like they were mixed at the same volume. It’s no doubt intentional, considering how intimate and just-so the record as a whole sounds (definitely worth some concerted headphone time), but headache bait for the drone averse. Maybe it’s just because it comes after so many others, but the band’s aloof formula begins to wear on “Drive,” which echoes a handful of other Warpaint songs.
Then again, considering it could be another four years before we hear another Warpaint album, maybe this one of those rare cases where more is better. Warpaint aren’t the sort of band that lands a huge, cross-over record in its career. But for fans of their sound, “Warpaint” is a confirmation of the band’s prowess, and as compelling as anything in their sonic wheelhouse likey to come out this year.
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Dylan Owens is Reverb’s all-purpose news blogger and album reviewer. You can read more from him in Relix magazine and the comment sections of WORLDSTARHIPHOP.
