3 out of 5

Label: Drag City

Producer: Steve Albini (engineered by)

‘Calcination’ is a difficult album to like.  But perhaps because Scout doesn’t really want us to like it.  The title’s verb means to ‘bring about a thermal decomposition, phase transition, or removal of a volatile fraction’ (from wiki), and the album’s lyrics attest to this treatment as applied to our songwriter – a lot of this is bare bones and fairly grueling, some of the wandering whimsy found on early tracks mostly gone, except popping up in the ‘I Am’ era sounding ‘Lucy Lucifer,’ but even that tracks seems like sort of a jokey reprieve before diving into even darker territory, and the lyrics don’t necessarily match its poppy beat.  I went back and forth on my feelings on this disc through several listens – from hating it, to not caring about, to digging some tracks, to impressed by its depth.  But since it is so polarizing and, at points, purposefully distancing, its hard to stand by it fully and give it a higher rating.

Artists will drop a very ‘personal’ recording and in press we’ll praise them for their openness and intensity and blah blah and give it twenty stars.  This album goes beyond personal, I think.  It’s a record that Scout had to make, regardless of whether or not there was a listener.  Opener ‘Just Do It!’ is somewhat misleading with its positive exclamation, twisting it into an obligation as opposed to a choice.  It’s definitely one of the stronger tracks on the disc, structurally strong and bold, its brash guitar riff giving way to balanced vocals, and style repeated about midway through the disc on ‘Kings’ – maybe one of Scout’s best and most concise tracks – which lets into ‘Lucy Lucifer’ before plunging into some minimal drone.  But back at the beginning of the disc we find the title track – a proclamation of intent to sweat out one’s demons – and ‘I.B.D.’  Both employ a more minimalist template than Scout’s used before, allowing the distortion to act as a harsh counterpoint to slowly stated points.  Somehow this morphs into ‘Bargin,’ a delicate track of memories which harkens back to her first and more acoustic Secretly Canadian release.  ‘Cherry Creek Bomb’ then bridges the divide between several prior releases, lurching between drum-heavy blasts and quiet moments.  The tail end of the album is stripped bare – particularly the five-minute ‘Ripe With Life,’ Scout’s vocal antics kept fully in check and just a guitar playing, just some notes, the space allowed to grow and grow and repetitive structure and tone the name of the game…

Lyrically, though the theme might be a bit more settled, Scout’s writing is still primarily the same, not really coming to direct points in any given song but coming up with some key thoughts.  She tends not to work the words too much or worry about being clever, sometimes repeating a phrase over and over so that, it seems, she really feels it, and that technique is employed frequently here.  And her instrumentation has almost always been sparse, but on the whole she tends to have a catch around which the rest follows; a poppy beat, some wacky vocal shrieks, a groovy guitar strum – and that’s where Calcination feels different, things left to linger on a note, and often not a tuneful one.  Atonal has also been a mainstay for Scout, but it’s not playful or weird on this disc, its an expression of a feeling.

Albini has mic’ed a range of artists and styles, from noise to silence, but he really gets the most out of this.  Everything echoes and grows and the space is absolutely filled by Scout – whose regular singing voice is somewhat thin – and her guitar, the harsh distortion discordant enough to want to, frankly, turn the volume down.  It’s a brittle and raw sound that, again, matches the feeling.

Ah, but we like these brutal soul-bearing albums.  Sure, me too.  But this is a tough one.  It takes some work to allow it in, and even then, the songs aren’t really welcoming.  Because they’re not for you.  I think this is a worthwhile companion piece to Scout’s output, absolutely, but even as a late-night-I’m-depressed listen… it’s more puzzling than conducive to our own weepy ways.  Still, because of those moments where it does work and suddenly strike you – and they’ll shift from song to song if you keep it on repeat – it’s worth the time and effort.