In Grief or in Hope

The kit is gone and you feel it in your chest before you register it consciously. The Montreal trio open with sustained guitar drone and Liam Andrews' bass carrying the rhythm alone, and the architecture holds. This is his first studio record with the band, tracked live, and the bass does structural and emotional work at once. On what may be the kindest way to leave it plods and churns in the low end while Robin Wattie traces elaborate melodic lines above it, resigned and unhurried, circling "Trade this body for a piece of ease" with the patience of someone who has been thinking that thought a long time. Something hymnal in the construction. Folk music filtered through noise and out the other side. a shape of shame is where the record announces what it's capable of, dry acoustic strums ringing above the feedback with a metallic clarity that feels almost misplaced before the noise rises and takes them. verdure is the centrepiece and the most harrowing stretch, a distorted bass signal and the hollow knock of a tapped pickguard cycling into something that resembles a malfunctioning synth, then escalating into harsh noise until the source barely registers as guitar. an uttering of antipathy turns condemnation inward through Auto-Tune, crystalline and psychedelic. It ends on a question dressed as a koan and the line "I could try again." The drones are still going when she says it.