Alibi FM

I’ve always been slightly at odds with voice modulation as it tends to appear in alternative/indie music (not that they’re bad per se but to name a few: Conan Mockasin, Yves Tumor, Bon Iver); perhaps the goal is to decenter or anonymize oneself, but more often than not, the voice seems unsure of whether it wants to signify or provoke.So, instead it occupies both positions, a reluctant zone that makes the relationship between production and vocalization feel like a game of catch-up.

This is why I think vocal-sample based music works so well (namely hip-hop/rap and certain genres of pop). Take for instance a good chipmunk vocal or trap-flavored, mega-pitched down vocal–these two methods of modulation are really good at pumping out affect and provide a great backdrop for our would-be performer in that they afford their vocalization/lyrics a certain pliability–no longer are you yourself obligated to generate affect when you’re surrounded by it. You are free to flail, to bask, to misdirect, or none of the above in this muck (see: Playboi Carti’s recent output).

I say all this to say that my main gripe with Chanel Beads’ Your Day Will Come is that the production may be overdetermined by the constancy of voice modulation. There is an overall ‘thinness’ in much of the instrumentation that aims to parallel or rhyme the sonic and affective registers of the vocal performance, of the small-but-driven voice, but for the most part tends to reassert the limitations of these parameters. The two seem to keep pace with one another in such a way that starts to meander towards sounding managerial, like they’re alibis for one another. It makes me wonder how many times one can hit the proverbial ceiling before realizing there’s actually a drop ceiling beneath it.

However, there are moments where the drop ceiling comes to the fore, where one can actually poke their head through like a groundhog. “Police Scanner” (which in my head is the de facto “aRtiSt sTaTeMeNt” song) begins with the feigned smugness of a single “yeah” that is later foiled by the abrupt, almost comedic finality of the femme-computer voice at the end. A song that damn near frolics (maybe even two-steps?) in its own paranoia and shame complex (“Looking at the guilt/Cannot break before it ends/Self-care, self-aware”), “Police Scanner” covers a lot of ground in its 2-minute 30-second runtime. The voice modulation here strikes a certain “twee-anthemic-ness” such that it points back to its own meagerness, which is reinforced by the two vocal bookends of the “yeah” and conclusive titular shoutout, as if to say the song wouldn’t be able to stand without these two posts. Here, the vocals saunter in cadence while their content limps. This feels rather fitting for a song about some troubled version of aspiration. A great song through which to think about this toggling of dispositions would be Prince’s If I Was Your Girlfriend. Certified banger.

There are several moments on the album that remind me of Nine Inch Nails’ approach to composition, particularly in that Mr. Nails and Mr. Beads share a penchant for the gradual build-up of a song, that initial acoustic moment that glides and snowballs into something much bigger than itself (especially in the outro of “Urn”). As opposed to Mr. Nails though, Mr. Beads has a much more slackened sensibility both in pace and palette–the kick drum of the opening track almost stumbles in, as if it were late to class, and those distant crunchy claps –reminiscent of Questlove’s snare drumming–in tandem with the sing-songy melodic nature of the vocals paint a picture of the one-man band’s wispy specter. I also think “Is it gonna rain again? Anniversary” is a very evocative bar…I found myself sitting with the many implications of that bar…

All in all, while this is a good album, it also foregrounds a reliance on that post-psychedelia indie voice modulation and the subsequent limitations of its sonic reach and palette. It tries to tweak and tinker with the “sound” of affect in such a way that makes its relationship to “staking a claim” at best, asymptotic, and at worst, allergic. I find myself yearning for more (both quantitatively and qualitatively) fleshed out moments of rupture (like the autotuned riff in Urn at the “2:17 mark“, or the impassioned melodic belting in the hook on “Embarrassed Dog,” or the nutty-ass, muffled power-chord at the 2:47 mark of Your Day Will Come) that though are great when they appear, also reassert how few and far between they are. À la the musician’s surname, I would hope he looks to another type of bead for his next release and comes out the other end…unclenched!