Drab Majesty – ‘An Object in Motion’ album review: A psychedelic new chapter
Like many people, I’ve been waiting for a new Drab Majesty release since 2019’s Modern Mirror. This week, the Californian duo – comprised of Andrew Clinco and Alex Nicolaou, better known as Deb Demure and Mona D – return with An Object in Motion, a 32-minute, four-track sonic odyssey that sees the group move into a new area, shedding the darkwave connections of the past.
An Object in Motion enters a more psychedelic space than before, evoking images of their native land’s rolling vistas and cultural past. “An extended player or a mini-album, you decide,” the press material instructs us, but despite how you quantify the new body of work, one thing is clear: Drab Majesty isn’t done yet, and the future is exciting.
Written during a 2021 retreat to the isolated coastal town of Yachats, Oregon, the environment clearly had a tremendous impact on Demure, who became deeply ensconced in the psychedelic pull of his 12-stringed Ovation electro-acoustic guitar. Drab Majesty has always had a transcendental resonance thanks to Demure’s arpeggiating, effect-drenched guitar work – despite the ostensible gothic and dark wave tags – with him utilising alternative folk tunings to achieve this hypnotic sound.
However, on An Object in Motion, the pair do something different, specifically tapping into experimental “flow states”, with the guitar leading the way and the industrial elements taking more of a backseat. Whilst the locomoting electronic beats are no way near as pronounced as on albums such as The Demonstration and Modern Mirror, the band has produced another record that washes over you, with their distinctive style still present, simply metamorphosed.
Adding to this transition inspired by early morning hikes in the Oregon rain, collaborations with Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, Beck and M83 associate Justin Meldal-Johnsen, and Uniform’s Ben Greenberg see the group branch out and mark the start of another chapter. An Object in Motion is as closely tied to 1960s folk-rock and baggy as it is to the darkwave of their past.
The record commences with the excellent lead single, ‘Vanity’, featuring Goswell. A number that touches six minutes, it’s perhaps the most dramatic composition Demure and Mona have released to date, complete with the frontman’s romantic fingerpicking and his commanding baritone. Essentially a ballad, the song is a slow builder, with Demure and Goswell dueting during the chorus for the bleak refrain, “If the valve breaks / then the earth quakes / and history finds a way / to put you in your place.”
Boasting classic Demure lines like, “It’s never a shame to be ashamed”, it’s hard not to find yourself lost in imagination with this one. Featuring a languid beat, with the kick drum echoing a narcotic-sedated heartbeat, ‘Vanity’ gradually glides into an emotive cacophony, with the rhythm, Demure’s sliding guitar, and Goswell’s haunting vocals combining for an all-encompassing final twist.
‘Cape Perpetua’, meanwhile, is a particular highlight. Evidently named after the forested headland near Yachats, the track opens with the slightly sinister chime of Demure’s 12-string. This busy, almost dissonant melody evokes Roger McGuinn’s freak-out riff on The Byrds’ folk-rock watershed moment, ‘Eight Miles High’. An instrumental, this is one of the moments where we see the guitar-led flow states come into action, with the echo-laced six-string again helping us forget our present environment, with another dream-like palette established as it floats on top of the airy synths that weave in and out.
It then gives way to the second single, ‘The Skin and the Glove‘, a more traditionally Drab Majesty moment because of the pronounced beat and the pair’s prominent vocals. However, even with the similarities, it’s still different from what they’ve released before. The rhythm is closely aligned with the baggy movement of the late 1980s, with an appropriately driving bassline. Another number that quickly propels itself onto the listener, Demure’s robotic refrain, “The spatial divide of the skin and the glove / Is the same as the ride from below to above”, is at the forefront of this, with it incredibly catchy.
An Object in Motion concludes with ‘Yield to Force’, the most experimental offering Drab Majesty have delivered. A kaleidoscopic soundscape, it’s just over 15 glorious minutes of hypnotic guitars and textures. Flirting with the dark side the band is so familiar with and explored on icey earlier instrumentals like ‘A Spire Points at the Heavens’, it keeps pushing, with the sparse elements building pressure, until it eventually fades out. It’s a great example of how not to overdo it artistically.
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