Mandy, Indiana
URGH
70--100点相当
The Guardian 含む2メディア以上が満点
Hyper Pop の手法、要素を通過した後の
Nine Inch Nails という感じ。
ある種の新しさと、前作からの練り込みは感じるので、
そういった意味で満点がでるほどの評価があるのも
頷ける。
ただ、個人的にリピートに至る
ハードさの中の心地よさみたいなものは
前作同様 あまり感じられなかった。
マンチェスター出身の4人組バンド
2nd
While working on their second album, two members of Mandy, Indiana—the Mancunian quartet fronted by a French valkyrie named Valentine Caulfield—were faced with their own corporeality. Drummer Alex Macdougall underwent surgery for a hernia and, after doctors found a lump, had half of his thyroid removed. Caulfield lost most of her vision in one eye. The 10-hour days that comprised the recording sessions could have broken them. Instead, the band’s distinctive sound—an alloy of industrial, post-punk, and ’80s neo-noir soundtracks—emerged titanium-plated and electrified. URGH is both headier and more visceral than anything Mandy, Indiana have made before. This isn’t body music or brain music; it’s spine music, homed in on the bony junction where mind meets matter.
Listening to Mandy, Indiana’s 2023 debut, i’ve seen a way, felt like wandering the darkrooms at Berghain—if Berghain blasted vintage French pirate radio broadcasts. You were in the cool kids’ club but couldn’t shake the sense of being held at a remove, as if there were another velvet rope you weren’t allowed to cross. URGH puts you right in the sex sling, and there’s Caulfield towering overhead, cracking a riding crop. As she recites Revelation 6 (the one about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) on opener “Sevastopol,” her voice glitches and frays like Jigsaw coming through the TV screen. The abiding mood is powerlessness: At any second, a trapdoor might open beneath your feet, sending you down a tube slide into a hornet’s nest of violins or a ball pit full of scrap metal.
