3 out of 5

Label: Ectopic Ents

Produced by: J.G. Thirlwell

I’m listening to this out of order, as Soak is an intended companion piece to preceding album Hide, and so maybe I’m missing some elements that build on one another, but: Soak is largely an album that doesn’t work. It’s a fascinating hodgepodge of Thirlwellisms, but it’s caught in a sticky spot between digital and analog; J.G.’s horror carnival themes and Venture Bros. orchestral ballast; something cinematic and something ephemeral.

Taking from that, this is not an album without peaks or, indeed, plenty of good songs: it kicks off with one of them, with the gang-shouted refrain of the title repeated over a thundering beat. But it also ends pretty suddenly, and this is telling of most of the listen, which can be truly great, but exhibit some immersion breaking moments, or ones that simply don’t push the album over the line: the very digital, crisp guitar sound doesn’t blend well with the more bombastic low-end; J.G.’s occasional snarls or treated vocals layer oddly with backing choruses or the anime-adjacent trills.

The sequencing generally canters from loud and beaty to Carpenter-influenced synth (there’s even a track partially named Halloween) and then to something off the Thirlwell path – like the Elephant 6y Kamikaze; the first half of the album swirls this together pretty tightly for what would’ve been a quality EP. But the relative artifice / internal dissonance becomes clearer the longer it goes on, leading to be moderately tuned out – while great riffs are playing! – as the disc continues.

Soak is, as always, an interesting Foetus project. Existing as it does at the exact crossroads between styles and approaches, it’s also oddly immemorable, even if, while you’re in it, you’d never mistake it for anything but a Foetus project.