Album Review: Of the Sun by Trupa Trupa

The fluid character of Jolly New Songs, stoic at one turn and manic the next, was strongly undergirded by the playing of bassist Wojciech Juchniewicz, who also contributes guitar and vocals. Aware of what's working for them, Trupa Trupa have Juchniewicz introduce Of the Sun with the elastic axis of "Dream About," and his parts go on to help set as much as anchor the tone on "Mangle," "Anyhow," and most of the album's dozen songs. Of the Sun bears familiar markings - the ring and crash of the guitars, the heavy echoing drums, the CD booklet of photographs conveying a colourless sense of modern dislocation - yet its profile is not prefabricated.

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Like any politically aware artist making music today, Polish indie rockers Trupa Trupa are particularly attuned to the tenor of our times. They understand that to be alive in 2019 is to perpetually grapple with two strongly oppositional states of being: paralyzing misery over looming ecological and social collapse, and whatever emotion it is--some might call it hope--that motivates us to get out of bed every morning, text birthday greetings to friends, sort our recyclables from our compostibles, and publicly shame fascists on the internet. The band's fourth album, Of the Sun, doesn't so much directly address the state of the world as vividly conjure the day-to-day sensation of existing within it, forever teetering on the tightrope walk between luminous ugliness and awful bliss.

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Listening to the apparently simple songs of Trupa Trupa often reminds me of reading a nineteenth-century novel; a gripping slog with beautiful, luminous moments that stay with you long after you've stopped listening. In this exercise the band act as both narrators and composers of a quest that never seems to have a satisfactory ending. From the off, with the single 'Dream About', they drop you headfirst into their strange world of half-thought fancies and uneasy confabulations.

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