On the band's debut, the personal becomes universal on a record that continues to keep the listener on their toes.
Photo: Jack Lovekin | Words: Ingrid Marie Jensen
"To tell what happened is to manipulate it into sense, reduce the loneliness and indicate direction, cut a person's grooves more deeply…if only by removing it from context, where everything becomes interesting in its strangeness. Hearing a story is telling it is to be implicated in it." – Richard Hell, Go Now
'Party Album' is a break-up story. The history of a love-affair-gone-wrong (as they so often do) a tale of heartbreak laid out over driving drums, and crashing, chaotic, cascades of sound that stake out the territory of an artist unafraid of both public opinion and personal introspection. The opening track, 'Boxing Day', charts a classical instance of miscommunication after the fact: "I never knew you felt like that/I'm such an asshole". Set over rippling drums and crashing cymbals, it drives home the fact that this, indeed a party album, an album you can dance to through the tears and hysterical laughter.
On, 'What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life', lead singer Jack Merrett recounts the tale of meeting someone who's pretty perfect (until it all goes south) that forms the album's core. Then the tempo lifts in a sudden wave and he begins screaming, voice hoarse with exhausted despair and disillusionment, like he's deep into a primal scream therapy session, obviously post-split: "Everything is dreadful. There must be some kind of escape." An equally rough question follows suit: "When your whole life flashes before your eyes, was it worth it?"
The sense of panic and loss in the lyrics, especially when backed with upbeat "party," music, disturbs the staid processes of response that it's so easy to slip into when we listen to music. It begs for closer attention than most artists ask of their listeners – good, because we need the challenge, we need our attention spans back. Merrett's voice struggles for dominance over the cacophony, edged with anger, hysteria and a singularly demented heartbreak. He sounds a little like Isaac Wood in his tremulous remembrances, a little like King Krule in his gravelly mumble, but mostly like Merrett and no one else – and sounding like yourself in this modern influx of continuous influence, is one of the most difficult tricks of all.
The narrative of 'Party Album' pieces itself together like a series of drunken voicenotes (the modern equivalent of a diary entry) and the sparsity of the lyrics gives the songs a sense of the organic, of not being overworked or overplayed despite their rawness. It's heavy stuff, emotionally; but there's lot resting on very few words, so naturally the language falters, and at times fails, falling into inarticulate screams of school-boy frustration. And this inarticulacy is what accomplishes the brunt of the work, is what makes the story a cohesive whole and satiates the bloodlust of curiosity raised in the listener in those first chaotic cascades of sound. Everybody wants to scream, but not everybody lets it out. Merrett does it for you, and on 'Party Album', the personal becomes universal. To borrow a line off Arthur Rimbaud, "I is another". Take that as you will, but the crux is this: the moment you tell a story about yourself, someone else can lay claim to it, because even the most personal, the most private, of our experiences are universal. 'Party Album' proves that this truth has not been lost to time and technology. It also proves that Famous are heading in the direction that their name promises.
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