Another artist might call an album like ๐๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ช๐ข๐ฉ ๐๐๐๐ their most challenging or adventurous. Across eleven tracks, searing theremins and pulsing reggaeton beats collide with downcast country and fairground field recordings. For Christian Molenaar, it's what counts as a pop record. It would be tough to accuse a collection of songs spanning apocalyptic folk, feedback-drenched soul and steel guitar-laden bedroom pop of "selling out," but Molenaar uses his diverse musical palette as a springboard to launch the catchiest, most direct songwriting of his vast discography. ๐๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ช๐ข๐ฉ ๐๐๐๐ builds off the sound Molenaar introduced on February's ๐๐ถ๐ด๐ข๐ค๐ฆ๐ข๐ฆ ๐๐ฒ๐ถ๐ช๐ฏ๐ฐ๐น, a boundary-breaking trip through chamber prog, post-punk, math metal and country, but where that album's ecstatic genre-hopping sprang forth as a pure expression of joy, ๐๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ช๐ข๐ฉ ๐๐๐๐ instead traces a mosaic of doomed relationships through circuit-bent synths and homemade guitar effects. To create the album's distinct sound, Molenaar built a suite of DIY instruments, including optical theremins and homebrew synthesizers, all fed through hand-wired contact mics and bespoke fuzz pedals. "I needed to get further inside the sound," Molenaar says, "to really inhabit the process." But for all the squalling feedback and distorted vocals, ๐๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ช๐ข๐ฉ ๐๐๐๐ stands out on the strength of Molenaar's songwriting. Embracing the sadness and anger of a lifetime of failures and disappointments, Molenaar transmutes these negative emotions into his catchiest, most affecting material yet. An iconoclast notorious for the sheer breadth of his musical and literary knowledge, ๐๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ช๐ข๐ฉ ๐๐๐๐ finds Molenaar makingโthere's no other way to put itโhis most stripped-down and personal album of his career.
