Album Review: There Is No Year by Algiers

After touring both stadiums supporting Depeche Mode and tiny eastern European headline shows directly afterwards, all in support of their excellent second album The Underside Of Power, Atlanta/London/NYC conglomeration Algiers might have been forgiven for taking a break. Instead they returned in 2019 with the explosive standalone slab of focused fury that is Can The Sub Bass Speak? A righteous affair of free jazz, samples and a stream-of-consciousness vocal track from front man Franklin James Fisher, it addressed a bewildering assortment of identity and race related questions he's faced and statements he's heard, among them: "How does it feel to be a black man making white music?"; "You look like Laurence Fishburne, you look like Lenny Kravitz…"; "I got black friends too. " Serving as a purposeful purge of anger as much as a signpost that Algiers mean business, the track's release might ostensibly have allowed the band to move forward.

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There Is No Year, the third album by Atlanta-based Algiers, was co-produced by Randall Dunn and Ben Greenberg. It further extends the reach of their previous outings while offering a more strategically articulated, disciplined musicality without sacrificing their core sound or blunting their emotional impact. In a scalding gumbo of post-punk mania, mutant gospel, shambolic blues, and ravaged funk and soul, they add more grimy electronic and industrial elements to their attack.

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The previous two records from the international quartet, Algiers (2015) and The Underside of Power (2017), showcased a group distinctively capable of marrying a range of pretty disparate textures - mechanistic techno, glorious hooks, searing post-punk, furious breaks - to create an increasingly coherent sonic identity. Their third record, There Is No Year, sees them push their extremes even further: the riffs are heavier, the grooves cheekier, the politics clearer and more righteous than ever before. It's a bold move, but then this is a bold band, and for the most part, it pays off.

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Atlanta author Blake Butler's 2011 novel There Is No Year follows a family struck by a plague of paranormal activity. They move into a new house and reality bends around them. The hallways constrict and contract, nicking elbows and knees; the television signal is blurry for normal channels, but the premium porn station comes in crystal clear; caterpillars spawn in the mailbox.

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Algiers make the sort of albums that should come with reading lists, which is a great and terrible thing. The transatlantic experimental rock quartet care passionately about ideas, and their music's ability to introduce those ideas, but they're stranded in our age of excess. Everyone has less time to listen, we just want the new new, constant stimulation, infinite variety, or the same old, over and again.

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