A Quick One: Slauson Malone - Vergangenheitsbewältigung (Crater Speak)
A/N: Any EP reviews in the future will generally be published as A Quick Ones, to keep them distinct from reviews of full albums. Read my review of Slauson Malone’s first album here for more context on this EP.
As a pitifully desperate saxophone wails in the background, Slauson Malone begins the second half of the song Smile #5 continuing where the previously released Smile #4 left off, reiterating the poignant words he first uttered there to be heard anew: “Can’t smile at the past when I see it/Mistake my past as seen it/’Cause what was ain’t what it really seem/Maybe pain is what I really need”. This moment, by Malone’s own admission, is the genesis and the centerpiece for his newest work, Vergangenheitsbewältigung (Crater Speak): a way for the artist (real name: Jaspar Marsalis) to expand upon certain themes and techniques that were left unresolved on his last project, 2019’s A Quiet Farwell, 2016-2018. The concept of truly reckoning with his nostalgia was one often touched upon throughout that record (particularly on Smile #4 and its three preceding installments), yet only on Malone’s latest release does that struggle truly comes to dominate his art. It’s not that the New York-based artist seeks to forget his history, recent or otherwise; the cover of this supplementary EP is a tattoo of his previous album’s artwork, and there are numerous lyrical and instrumental nods to it scattered throughout his newest effort. ‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung’ translates roughly from German to ‘coping with the past’, and it is the conscious, daunting effort to do so that drives this EP; not just Malone’s past, but that of his friends, his peers, his ancestors, his country. The ability to ‘smile at his past’ was left behind on A Quiet Farwell, and what remains is a morose, subdued collection of tracks grappling with a question to which there may be no answer.
The amount of context needed to truly understand what is going on here is considerable; not only are there many reinterpretations of melodies and lyrics from A Quiet Farwell, but the page numbers attached to each song title refer to passages from a book entitled Crater Speak, released by Malone and containing art, photos, and writings which influenced his creative process. Though the generous use of stripped-back acoustic guitar may make this project more approachable for the uninitiated than the producer’s last experimental work, the real innovations here are reserved for the devoted, those keen enough to pick up on the copious reconstructions of ideas and melodies from A Quiet Farwell and studious enough to understand why Malone chose to rework so much of his material. Their reward for doing so is nebulous yet recognizable, a sense of cathartic gratification at catching detailed callbacks like the aforementioned couplet on Smile #5 or the delicate My feet’s tired, itself partially a redone arrangement (albeit a quite beautiful one) of a similarly titled track on A Quiet Farwell. An abrasive wailing of sirens quickly cedes the spotlight to a soft piano melody upon which Malone’s voice is thoughtful yet forlorn, but the song finds a new energy after the emergence of some subtle percussion prompts an emotive repeat of its chorus: “I was on the roof and/Contemplatin’ truth and/Saw myself runnin’/But now I ain’t runnin’”.
Elsewhere these remembrances morph into an incredulous awe as Malone turns entire tracks on their head, breaking his creations down to their barest elements and then rebuilding from the ground up with little more than strummed guitar and softly crooned vocals until their greatness is entirely their own. Hearing the sampled mantra of THE MESSAGE 1 (“No matter how hard you try, you can’t stop me now”) reappear on THE MESSAGE 3: Blood is another instance of evocative nostalgia, but it’s not just Malone’s plucked rendition of the melody or his wistful vocals that define the song’s ingenuity in relation to its predecessor. It’s the absolute desperation in his voice as he echoes “Stop me now!” with an impossible anguish, or later as he raps “Cycle to blame, perpetuate pain, watch it rotate/Past leave a stain in a carbon trace ‘til west erased” as the guitar line disintegrates underneath his words; brief moments in larger compositions that stick out amidst a morass of submerged sound, a microcosm of Malone’s artistry as a whole. Following this is The Wake Pt. 3 & 2, a reimagining of the most involved track on A Quiet Farwell; here a familiar descending horn line contrasts gracefully with intricate guitar strumming, the duo fading in and out of focus until Malone’s melancholic croon finally enters (“I know, you know/I’ll be at your wake, in the waves/When you’re dead, when you’re dead”). Earlier songs had a much stronger folk influence than could ever have been expected of the artist before, but the latter half of the record’s coda finds him crafting increasingly jazz-adjacent acoustic melodies, his verse lifted from the song’s original version yet delivered in an entirely fresh cadence of despondence: “Throw you in the water/Turn your life to a martyr/Staring at red and blue lights/Blood-purple skies”.
The presentation of musical ideas on A Quite Farwell, 2016-2018 was scattered, an experimental jumble of sonic palettes too oblique to comfortably be described as simply ‘hip hop’ or ‘sound collage’ and too singular for any accurate comparisons to be made. Slauson Malone’s latest EP may find him working with a more conventional array of sounds, yet the genre confusion remains palpable right through the project’s final moments, culminating in a boisterous amalgam of artful jazz, ambient vocals, and untempered emotion. Feelings of sadness, regret, and bitter nostalgia drown the otherwise minimalist arrangements on Vergangenheitsbewältigung (Crater Speak), but the German term actually has a specific meaning in context beyond just ‘coping with the past’. It refers to the need for a nation to reckon with its own history, acknowledging it without dismissing or forgetting the legacy of murder and genocide; a national conversation, but also one had at the individual level within one’s own realm of morality. This is not a straightforward work of art, nor is it a hopeful one, yet Malone’s stripped-down collection of recapitulations is nonetheless compelling in its blatant need to exist. Even without an optimistic conclusion, the act of baring his soul has clearly let him make some sort of peace with his recurring antagonist; that the record still has so much to offer from a musical perspective is merely a consequence of untempered genius.
8.5/10
Favourite Tracks: THE MESSAGE 3: Blood, The Wake Pt. 3 & 2, Smile #6