4 out of 5

Label: Master of Bates

Produced by: Jonathan Bates

After four albums of poking at a sound and concept from different angles, Jonathan Bates – Big Black Delta – …gives up.

Or at least, that’s how the press around this album makes it sound, or at least the bit that’s getting a lot of coverage up front: “…Making an album is not a healthy thing. Spending a year and a half making a collection of music and then putting it out and people literally giving it 30 minutes is not good for the soul,” and “I’ve been doing this for so long that I don’t give a shit anymore…”

Of course, I’m playing a similar game as such articles, baiting (no pun intended) a reaction before going on to say that Adonai, BBD’s fifth release, is absolutely not the release of someone who doesn’t give a shit. But, with no bad faith intended, whereas I think that article and several reviews are using Bates’ responses to frame the album’s flippancy of tone and style, I think this is actually a continuance of the streamlining and maturity experienced on the last release. There’s always been a dose of shallowness with this persona, carried over from Bates’ previous band, Mellowdrone, and combined with the arena-sized hooks and synth sheen of the BBD sound, that didn’t always stretch well o’er some trite lyrics and an hour of music. The prior album suffered from the same, but there was more humanity in the presentation. On the one hand, Adonai seemingly regresses from that – it is ultimate arena and sheen – but it also pretty much completely removes the filler experimentations of all preceding releases; tracks and buffed runtimes which begged for the music to be given deeper analysis that maybe wasn’t otherwise supported. Furthermore, this is the first album (maybe besides the ambient whoRU812, although that’s arguably not as focused) that comes across as conceived from start to finish; arranged with purpose and not just around singles.

But I’ll admit: I didn’t hear that the first go-around. I heard Bates’ usual array of love songs and breakup songs; the spattering of badass hooks; lovely crooned vocals over keyboard glitter. Though, in the middle, there’s this wonderful lil’ instrumental oddity, Pik Pok, which exists in some weird space between Tortoise’s TNT and dancefloor electro. Using that as a purposeful split, we actually have two perspectives on the album: bitterness, and acceptance. Before and after. Reading further into that linked interview, Bates mentions wanting to create music that was, in a sense, more insular. If we look at the album art, it’s a bizarre step away from the spacey abstracts of earlier, or 4’s cool landscape: it’s angular; almost violent; mapped to human shapes and vaguely organic shapes.

The concept of Adonai, if indeed there is one, doesn’t land fully, with the lack of filler going the opposite way of maybe preventing some tracks from getting the space needed to really land; some lyrics are – as always – a bit cringe in their attempted profundity, but even this habit works better when it’s wrapped in a concept instead of presented as face value.

A truly spectacular listening experience, and while I get the roundabout way Bates has been talking about the release, I hope it grabs ears that get to appreciate how much the artist really does give a shit.