2 out of 5

Label: Needle and Thread Records

Produced by: ?

Shallowly, my first thought upon hearing the twee-d, 80s beats of AgesAndAges’ fifth album, Fine Thanks and You: I bet this is based around a birth or a death.

Fairly, if equally shallowly, you could probably make that remark about any music album and find it often holds true. But I suppose what I was hearing was the album’s relative toothlessness, and how such shifts in an artist’s output generally stems from one of those mentioned events happening close to them. Not that AaA have been particularly harsh at any point in their discography – and with each subsequent release their sound has softened, requiring me to adapt my expectations along the way – but I think singer Tim Perry’s somewhat sardonic take on the world has always shown through, such that repeated spins of those releases have always provided dark edges that become more apparent over time. Plus: there’s a kind of mumblecore sing-song beat that Perry has been using since Pseudosix that always makes my heart flutter, and has remained a key part of AaA’s sound.

But most of that’s… gone on Fine Thanks and You. Which, in an interview I can admittedly no longer find, Perry did confirm to be inspired by a death: the songwriter processed this event by going on walks, including wandering through big box stores and thinking about the formalized and sanitized interactions in these sort of dwindling establishments. The output of that processing – this album – feels equally wandering: excepting a few clear singles, which have a version of that sing-song beat, the music of Fine Thanks is very open-ended, lacking choruses which hit any differently than the verses, or any surprising collisions of instrumentation, mostly being very digital sounding drums, synthy keys, and casual strums. So follow the lyrics – Perry has tended towards broad sentiments, but, to me, the best AaA songs provide a sense of driving towards something with those sentiments, whereas here, it all feels purely observational.

This is definitely by design: from that you’ll-just-have-to-trust-me-it-exists interview, the album was intended to be pretty breezy. If that’s a vibe you’re looking for, then my rating won’t match your experience. But as a fan / follower since those early days, the breeziness is exactly why I’m not here: I always reveled in how AaA was meant to be injecting some positivity in the musical landscape of its day but was, like, inherently bitter at the same time. The quiet / loud musical juxtapositions of Pseudosix carried over into AgesAndAges very big choruses, paired with very frail verses. Narrow both of those pairings down to their mid-ranges and you get Fine Thanks and You: kind of the big box version of their sound, greeting you pleasantly on the way in and out and presenting some appealing stuff, but stuff you’ve mostly seen or heard already.