Present Tense

have earned a well-deserved reputation as post-punk innovators unafraid to hit as hard and be as weird as they want. They're prolific -- 2021's is their fourth full-length in just over three years -- and they're consistent. Even at the best of times, their music is filled with paranoia and uncanniness, qualities that fit the fraught era in which this album was made all too well. If possible, is even more hallucinatory and high-strung than ' previous output. "You do it until you cannot," intones as everything around him wobbles seismically on "Strawberry Cough," one of the album's most beautiful and nightmarish moments. Here and on the rest of the album, all of ' touchstones are present and accounted for: elegant, inventive drumming, Dutch angle guitars, a psychedelic strangeness in how they layer their sounds, and a willingness to build tension and resolve it only when they're good and ready to. The implosive, nine-minute "Alone Without" (previously released as an Adult Swim single) is a prime example of ' expertise at suspense, with fuzzy contrails of guitar stretching out almost as long as the spaces between 's surreal lyrics. With highlights including "General Public"'s slashing homage and "How to See in the Dark"'s sculptural sleekness, seems like a very good but somewhat straightforward album until the last two tracks. The band took a more experimental approach to writing and recording that stands out on "Present Tense," where backward drums and cryptic observations ("all life remains kneeling in love") take on an almost spiritual dimension that feels equally ominous and optimistic, and on the brilliant closer "Mirrored," which brings the album full circle by adding a metal-tinged doom to the heaviness the band hinted at on the opening track "XOUT." Exciting developments are just more proof of how extend the challenges they set for themselves to their audience -- if they leave you rattled, they've done their job. ~ Heather Phares