5 out of 5

Produced by: Geoff Soule

Label: Supermegacorporation

Like many things from the Fuck school (bloop!), there’s beauty in simplicity.  And what I’ve dug about Soule’s solo career is that his approach maintains that simplicity, absolutely, while setting to the side the shit-eating grin that sometimes unseats Fuck’s albums.  Now, that’s absolutely the charm of the band: that their name, in combination with their slippery sense of seriousness, seems deadset against attracting the audiences their delicate compositions – often backed by intelligent arrangements and wordplay – might otherwise bring in; that being said, it’s been nice to see Soule and Prudhomme (although he only has the one solo title to date) show their strengths as individual artists, and perhaps give people another avenue by which to travel back to the parent band.

Soule’s debut – Man Brandishing… – was pretty close to Fuck in its blend of sounds: acoustic, punk, electro.  Since then his career has slowly slid into more open-ended acoustics; ‘dialogue’ being his separate release, it’s the first step in that direction and thus, perhaps, an interesting crossroads.  Setting aside how the title of the album may or may not apply, the album is bookended by some pleasant guitar noodlings, spotted inbetween with either wonderfully moody dirges – the appropriately titled ‘A dirge’ – or building instrumental numbers (‘They are in the gate’) – or sweet songs (‘San diego winter’) or etcetera, creating a wonderful palette of emotions in a short span of time, with crisp production by Soule.  There’s a sense of location to the tracks – two titles are in foreign languages, two make references to specific places (assuming ‘Axixic’ is a bastardization of Ajijic, Mexico, where part of this was recorded) – and a seesaw sensibility between cheer and, perhaps, dread.  How that ties into that title…?

Soule’s solo works create a wonderful sense of mystery, maintaining his band’s skill for lightly swirling together varying styles to keep the listener intrigued; the difference on ‘dialogue’ is that Geoff never gives away whether he’s smiling or tearful, wrapping the listener up in a short journey through some subtle-y complex creations which can either be as peaceful or ponderous as you desire.