To explore the details of a possible sequence of events that is not currently actual, it becomes necessary to perform a thought experiment, to inhabit the interconnected complication of a moment, of ‘situation’. In the estimation of a recently graduated cretin whose summer involved copious plays of Alt-j’s June 2 release “Relaxer,” this album is one such thought experiment, using techniques of sampling and barely obscured double-meaning to test the waters of a nearby possible world wherein creativity means something new and the idea of vitality is, at the least, complicated.
“01110011/Crying zeros and I’m hearing 111s” begins “In Cold Blood,” the second track off “Relaxer,” immediately creating a dialogue about binary code, about the yes/no equations that determine our paths. Complicating this intuition however is the title, which recalls Truman Capote’s account of brutal murder, and the subsequent lyrics, which outline a summer pool party’s gruesome turn. This track’s use of references to further its narrative is carried on throughout the album.
In a way akin to T.S. Eliot’s poetry, “Relaxer” is full of samples. Aptly named third track “House of the Rising Sun” rifs The Animals’ 1964 hit, altering the tempo and some of the lyrics, but preserving the underlying message. Fourth track “Hit Me Like That Snare” calls to the Kinks’”You Really Got Me” in energy and instrumentation, and ends with the repeating line “Fuck you, I’ll do what I wanna do,” a seeming nod to the early punk of the likes of Ronnie Cook & the Gaylads’ “Goo Goo Muck”. Like Eliot returns to the Bible and Ovid’s “Metamorphosis” repeatedly in his masterpiece “The Waste Land,” so too does Alt-j return to the history of music, referencing the classic folk song “The Auld Triangle” in the album’s penultimate track “Adeline”.
Given fifth track “Deadcrush,” with lyrics “Swim low/In the back dry in the night/Sample/Put it there, get the money (watch me now),” it’s a safe bet that sampling is a major theme of the album. Having established this, it becomes salient to wonder why. Maybe this is a question of the nature of sampling itself. Many worry that simply retooling another artist’s work signals a lack of creativity; is it unoriginal? What is originality? What allows us to sample in the first place, and what is causing it to be a relevant, and prevalent, topic?
My guess, pairing the themes of binary code and sampling, is that the question of originality intersects with questions of technology and of human-ness. If a song was made solely of samples, could a computer—a being with Artificial Intelligence, for example—not write it? Would it still be a song? Maybe “Relaxer” is a thought experiment meant to explore that question.
After a long silence, the final track of “Relaxer” explodes into the musing “How green, how green was my valley?” Something here has ended.
I choose to understand a double entendre: “how lush was the Earth before it wasn’t?” and “how good was I in bed, how vibrant was my lust for you, how fertile was my crescent?” Both readings leave me inclined to attach relevance to the question of humanity, the nearly impenetrable question of what it ‘is’ to be us, and the increasingly commensurate question “what does it do to ‘others,’ if there are such a thing, when we act without outward regard?” The question “how good am I” is both self-interested and a nearly inescapable human curiosity—if this question is being asked as an ending, is it perhaps the cause of the end itself? Is being human the downfall of the human and, eventually, of the green Earth? Would it be better if we were not the way we are—if we were not at all?
This sonic thought experiment seems to prove against itself: if we were not the way we were, the experiment could not have occurred.
In lieu of an actual review, I’ll note that “Relaxer” also employs DC Comics and Harry Potter as subjects of sexually charged metaphors, and sounds at times like a church on a wet coastline in the North Atlantic, and at others is an addictive, label-avoidant work of hip genius. In case you’re into that.
Roadside Wildflowers 