Release date: June 26th
Record label: Bar None
Genre: Experimental folk, folk punk, folk rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Chad Matheny is one of the most unique and exciting songwriters of his era, and for the fast few years he’s been acting like it–self-releasing albums, hiding some of his best material on high-concept digital-only releases, appearing in opening slots for tours by bands much bigger (and less interesting) than his Emperor X project who nonetheless recognize the debt they owe to Matheny’s long-running career. Matheny’s music is instantly recognizable–bits of “folk punk” and Mountain Goats-ish folk rock with very specific geopolitical, transportational, and interpersonal (always found in the midst of these heady subjects) concerns. It is tempting to frame Unified Field, the latest Emperor X album, as a “return to form” in some way–it finds him returning to Bar None Records (who released 2011’s Western Teleport, arguably his most beloved album) after years in the semi-independent wilderness, and he’s even doing the “advance singles leading up to a wide digital and physical release” thing with this one. Of course, there’s not really a one-size-fits-all “form” when it comes to Emperor X, so what we’re talking about here is a fascinating and singular album in a fascinating and singular discography.
Unified Field was largely recorded in Ukraine, a country that the Florida-originating, Berlin-based Matheny has spent a lot of time in over the years; his recent experiences in the war-torn country (and his perception of these experiences in the non-war-torn countries in which he lives and tours) explicitly shape what we can reductively call the more “political” side of Unified Field; I’ll talk about that end in a second, but the album, like the rest of the Emperor X oeuvre, is more than that. The deeply-felt personal (real or fictional) narratives have always been the glue holding Matheny’s writing together, and Unified Field offers up beautiful examples of the form like the title track, “Superbus”, and (probably my favorite song on the album) “Feeling Nothing”. They bolster the granular details throughout Unified Field but they also live and breathe on their own. With Unified Field literally on the front lines and subsequently sounding more urgent than ever in parts, they’re absolutely needed.
The other end of the spectrum is Matheny’s explicit zeroing in on immigration in “Praise Jesus! Hail Reagan!”, the Russian-Ukrainian War in “Pissing With the Flashlight On”, and market forces in “Line Go Up Line Go Down”. While the first two come from deeply sincere places and are also both quite catchy, “Line Go Up Line Go Down” is the shining example of big-picture, global Emperor X on Unified Field. Everything is perfect on that one, an extremely fervent rejection of the invisible hand with a complex but understandable call to action. When I talk about the “uniqueness” of Emperor X, I’m absolutely thinking of the bridge to “Line Go Up Line Go Down”, the clearest journey into Matheny’s personal politics on the record. No matter where one falls on the political spectrum, one could certainly find something objectionable in Matheny’s linking together of the Soviet Union, United Nations, and European Union as he weighs the failures and ideals of all three–the brilliance and righteousness of “Line Go Up Line Go Down” is such that any quibbles with framing I might have start to look like the luxurious window-dressing they ultimately are.
I’m going to have to do a fourth paragraph here to tackle what I’m viewing as another category in Matheny’s writing in Unified Field–an overtly metaphorical, surprisingly (for Emperor X) vague and opaque side seen in “Cybertruck”, “Ostrich Toss”, and “I Am a Beached Whale”. These all read like fables of some kind, following straightforward narratives holding up larger points that may or not be obvious at first. Climate change and extraction capitalism hover over all three to a degree–“Cybertruck” seems to use the titular vehicle as an opulent metaphor for the rotting death march certain actors seem hell-bent on keeping us following (let’s not forget to draw the link between the endless drones and bombs falling around Matheny’s choice of recording location and the slow-roasting of the planet, of course). “I Am a Beached Whale” is pretty sad; I kind of don’t want to think about that one right now. “Ostrich Toss” might be the most interesting thing on Unified Field. It’s a bouncy one, a Looney Tunes-esque see-saw between the narrator and their foil before the titular flightless bird delivers a speech condemning, I guess, all of humanity, at the end of the song. Perhaps the characters in the song have State-level analogues, or perhaps the ultimate driver of “Ostrich Toss” is a different kind of subjugation or industrial violence. I’m not sure, but I’m thinking about it and turning it over in my head–Unified Field, as with the rest of Matheny’s best work, is expertly designed to provoke in such a way. (Bandcamp link)
Rosy Overdrive 