Full Album Premiere & Review: REZN, Solace
[Click play above to stream REZN’s Solace in its entirety. Album is tomorrow, March 8. US tour dates here.]
Serenity in and through heft, exploration of space and a space, creation of a parabolic world movement, and a bit of The Tempest to keep things classy; the fourth album from Chicago’s REZN, not coincidentally titled Solace, is revelatory as regards the band’s blend of cosmic doom, experimentalist ambience, drone and that-which-is-riffed-big. It is their most accomplished offering to-date. Though they’ve done between-LP releases before, collaborations, live records, etc. — and they’ll have more to come in a full-length PostWax collab with Mexico City instrumentalists Vinnum Sabbathi sometime later this year — it’s been three years since the four-piece of guitarist/vocalist Rob McWilliams, bassist Phil Cangelosi (also rainstick), drummer Patrick Dunn and synthesist, flutist, pianist and saxophonist Spencer Ouellette (aka Catechism) — who shines throughout Solace in ‘secret weapon’ style whether it’s the flourish of synth after a minute into “Possession” or the sax in the penultimate “Faded and Fleeting” — offered their sprawling, hour-plus-long third full-length, Chaotic Divine (review here), and while the comparatively tidy six-track/40-minute Solace doesn’t spread itself across two 12″ platters the same way, its consuming tonality, patient but methodical execution and overarching music-as-narrative procession are both more pointed and more engrossing.
Recorded and mixed in 2021 by Matt Russell, who mixed Chaotic Divine, with an abiding lushness of tone and psychedelic, headphone-filling fullness, mastered by Zach Weeks and topped off with cover art by rightly-revered Oregonian painter Adam Burke, the album plays out across three discernible stages that run through and between the songs themselves, and quickly benefits from perhaps the most crucial decision REZN made in its construction, which is to open instrumental. “Allured by Feverish Visions” is by no means the longest cut on the album — four of the six tracks are between seven-and-a-half and eight minutes long, including the leadoff — but its transcendental sensibility is pivotal to setting the mood and atmosphere for everything that follows.
It is the point from which the band branch out, unfolding gradually with gentle ride cymbal taps, ethereal wisps of flute, solidified bass underneath prefacing the roll to come, and standout shimmers of guitar, likewise soothing and hypnotic. In addition to beginning Solace as a whole, it marks the start of the first of the three stages, chapters, parts, movements, etc., of the record as a whole, growing heavier as it nears five minutes with deeper distortion and feedback, calling to mind the drone-heavy triumph of Mühr (who roundabout begat Temple Fang and is not a comparison I make lightly) a decade ago.
This relatively peaceful, gorgeous, molten and meditative beginning continues as the guitar and synth ring out on a fade into silence ahead of the more active beginning of “Possession,” more immediate in the kick drum and bassline, guitar soon joining. McWilliams‘ first vocals arrive shortly after, echoing, gently melodic, unforced and soulful as they shift from channel to channel with each line, and the temperament of “Allured by Feverish Visions” is maintained, and that’s the key.
In some ways, Solace feels less about the individual splits between songs — though pieces like “Stasis,” “Possession” “Reversal,” and even the spoken word-inclusive closer “Webbed Roots” have their standalone impressions as well — than the whole-album spirit that seems to have been so purposefully harnessed and toward the emphasis of which those individual songs seem placed. As “Possession” unfolds and builds, the second verse becomes more of a call and response and they sound like they’re still moving slow but they’re not, and when they let go, that’s the beginning of the next stage. There’s a break four minutes into “Possession.” The drums cut short, Dunn‘s hand muting the cymbal, some residual guitar is maintained for ambience, and when they sweep in at 4:16 with the heaviest riff they’ve yet brought, that’s the start of Solace‘s second phase.
Had REZN been writing strictly for bombast, chances are they would’ve called the record something else, but Solace at its heaviest — which is in this second movement across the middle of the record starting in the latter part of “Possession” and moving through “Reversal” and until about 5:30 into “Stasis” — wants neither for crunch, as the bass chugging in the march of “Possession” demonstrates before crashing into the amp hum and feedback from whence the ready-to-go lurch of “Reversal” picks up, nor mass, as said lurch offers in plenty. With synth again peppering and enriching the totality, the initial roll breaks to make way for the first verse, McWilliams again turning an otherwise inconspicuous moment into a soft-touch highlight à la Sean Lennon, but will return as the low-end volume surge after three minutes takes hold, this time met by the vocals (in at least two layers) in a kind of chorus preceding a spread-out guitar solo and whale-song synth/effects that leads the way back to the quieter verse.
But the tension is there where it hadn’t been until “Possession” established it, and through a willfully meandering stretch of echoing almost Morricone-style guitar, through the subsequent verse, stop and final plucks, it’s still there in the drums, waiting for payoff not in itself but to come with the rolling “Stasis,” which follows. I’ll put this in bold because it’s important: This interaction is what it’s all about. It’s not just the songs; it’s the way the material converses with itself, the way the songs interact and complement each other. On the vinyl, “Stasis” is the start of side B, but even as they capitulate to the needs of format, REZN maintain the linear trajectory begun with “Allured by Feverish Visions,” which “Stasis” brings to its most outwardly intense point.
One might liken its celebration of nod to Monolord, but “Stasis” is consistent atmospherically and speaks to Ufomammut‘s Eve in its larger-than-some-of-parts aspect. More forward vocally and swirling its heaviness as it goes, “Stasis” is a slow careen until nearly four minutes into its total 7:40, when it moves to a stretch of calmer guitar and verse that begins “Feels like I’ve been here before…,” and fairly enough so, but it’s something of a misdirect since at 4:54 the full brunt of the distortion lands punctuated by the thud of the drums, and all else seems to stop. It is the darkest moment of Solace and the topmost point of its whole-album parabolic sequence, with a light guitar strum and bright-shine of keyboard announcing the arrival at the third stage, which begins with the comparatively minimalist ambient guitar-and-keys-together-into-drone-oblivion end of “Stasis” and into and through the penultimate “Faded and Fleeting,” also the shortest single piece here at 3:32, and beyond, to “Webbed Roots” at the finish.
But just as “Allured by Feverish Visions” was more substantial than an intro, so too is “Faded and Fleeting” more than an interlude. For the moment at about 1:40 alone with McWilliams‘ voice and Ouellette‘s sax transition from one to the other on the same note alone, it is a high point of REZN‘s career to-date, and its mellow-heavy acid flow, feeling all the more there and gone for its relatively brief runtime, encapsulates the fluidity of Solace‘s entire articulation.
This third and final-with-an-asterisk movement of Solace concludes as “Webbed Roots” begins with a foreboding current of distorted drone beneath the floating figure of guitar, the drums pushing along and the bass tense. Over the first three-plus minutes, “Webbed Roots” follows a linear build, and gives it due crescendo with the synth-topped heft of the riff that emerges, but the feedback gives way to otherworldly drone and the drums announce the redirect about to take place with a quick fill, so that when Marie Davidson begins the recitation of Prospero’s monologue/soliloquy from Act V of The Tempest — “we are such stuff as dreams are made on,” etc. — and McWilliams returns for a last verse leading to a final heavy surge, the sense of arrival is palpable.
They’re at the end and REZN unrepentantly give the occasion its due, following an ascending heavy nodder progression to a logical peak and then stopping, leaving just an epilogue of standalone guitar to mirror “Allured by Feverish Visions” as the final element to depart.
In part because of that last stretch of guitar, “Webbed Roots” most makes sense in thee context of Solace as a whole, but that’s precisely the point. I don’t know when it was composed in relation to the rest of the album — the band has said that “Reversal” was one of the earliest written, so perhaps they worked from the middle out in terms of the movements across the span — but its intent as closer is as much to cap as to summarize the depth of what’s come before, and the incorporation or Shakespeare near the end feels as much like an underscoring of the record’s play-in-three-acts structure (despite the fact that The Tempest had five; similar shape, different application) as a suitable conclusion for this particular midwinter night’s dream.
It is further evidence to support Solace as intended to be taken in full, and invariably positions REZN among the US’ most resonant purveyors heavy psychedelia. In every turn and contemplation, it is ‘next level’ craft, concept and performance — no minor achievement, considering their first three long-players — and offers a progressive stylistic path forward that others hopefully will follow, using heft and repetition and scope and melody as tools toward the greater purpose of its expression, rewarding those who take it on through the internalization of its magnitude and the comfort complete panorama.
Solace wants to become a part of you. Let it.
Tags: Chicago, Illinois, REZN, REZN Solace, Solace
[…] Read the full review and submerge yourself in Solace today, exclusively at The Obelisk, at THIS LOCATION. […]
[…] the full review and submerge yourself in »Solace«, exclusively at The Obelisk, at THIS LOCATION. REZN’s »Solace« was recorded in July of 2021 at Earth Analog in Tolono, Illinois, engineered, […]