We seem to be in this weird schism when it comes to music formats. Some declaim the album project is as good as dead, while others believe there’s still some inherent worth in the album as a crucible for a particular artistic vision – whether that vision is conceptual, method-based or purely based on aesthetics. The whole point might just be moot, as many consider something as fragmented as The Beatles’ The White Album an album as well.
Amidst all this rhetorical jumble, it’s been fun and encouraging witnessing artists themselves put their own foot in the door on what an album or EP should or should not entail. I have to think back to Trent Reznor defiantly (and hilariously) telling a fan to “suck [his] entire cock” for declaring his six-song, 30-minute long release Bad Witch an EP instead of an album. Reznor’s argument was that EPs get lost easily in streaming purgatory, and this was a way for Nine Inch Nails to imbue more value in the work. Ethel Cain did the fun inverse of this on her much-scrutinised EP Perverts: creating 90-ish minutes of experimental and drony music meant to get lost in – a complete autonomous one-eighty from her previous, more pop-oriented confessional music.
This has to be said: both Reznor and Cain have sufficient industry pull to bend its mechanism to the elasticity of their own creativity, which should be a reality for all artists in an ideal world. One should be able to set their own boundaries to ensure the best results, and the industry should return that faith. But alas, it’s not as easy a proposition for new artists still on the cusp of their quote unquote ‘big break’. For every band like Lambrini Girls – whose vision materialised fully formed from the get-go – there are about 10 or 20 who are still finding their voice.
On their 2022 debut LP The Great Regression, fellow Brighton noise makers DITZ showed the kinds of flashes – bolstered by a reputation for chaotic live performances – that were hard to hate. Opener “Clocks” was a sinister noise-rock barrage that pierced sharper than the spear of Longinus itself, while a track like “I Am Kate Moss” (what is it about Brighton bands referencing Kate Moss these days?) brilliantly employed that John Carpenter chill to its slinking skeletal post-punk structure.
Since The Great Regression was DITZ’ debut album, it was easy to give them a pass for lapsing to more uninspired meat-headed aggro-rock conventions for each spell of ingenuity. Let’s be realistic here: creating an all-killer, no filler slam dunk instant-classic is still more exception than a rule, and we can’t whip artists into doing that on command. Even influential bands like Radiohead or Slint had to fuck around a bit and throw their weight as to what they could be, before finding out what they ended up becoming.
But as said before: to get to that point, artists should be allowed to set their own parameters, particularly in realising under which conditions the creative returns bear the most fruit. And from what I read between the lines and various interviews, the process surrounding DITZ’s second full-length album Never Exhale lived up to its name. Indeed, there wasn’t much room to breathe. The bulk of the material for this album was recorded in January at Holy Mountain in London, and much of the writing was created in-between bouts of heavy touring.
Some bands thrive under such pressure, but DITZ – at least in case of Never Exhale – offer mixed results at best. Though not exactly a regression from their heady debut, DITZ seem more fatigued bending over backwards and sideways to extract the more inspiring bits. “Taxi Man” was written in Cologne amidst a two-day session of disarray, where reportedly some band members shuffled their feet to even show up. And well, it sounds like that too. It’s mammoth riff and stampeding drums merely telegraph menace: it sounds more like a discarded demo from a Royal Blood-album before it’s all lubed up for radio airplay. Not a band that supposedly wears influences of Shellac, Gilla Band and METZ on its sleeve – all acts that are decisively more dangerous than DITZ.
Speaking of the first two of those names, “Space/Smile” sounds exactly like a hybrid of those two bands if you were to ask an AI to craft it. “Four” starts off promising with some whirring guitar textures, but halfway in, clutches headlong onto yet another uninspired and clunky slog rock riff. “18 Wheeler”, meanwhile, is a semi-convincing The Jesus Lizard-cosplay, but vocalist C.A. Francis’s Teleprompted rage-outs don’t approximate the delirious rodeo clown-like camp of a David Yow.
Much like The Great Regression, moments of dullness and brilliance lock horns in an unresolved stalemate on Never Exhale, and frustratingly so. On the songs where DITZ’s volatile creativity does click into place, they can indeed be an incredibly thrilling band. “God on a Speed Dial” – with its air siren opening riff – never bothers to cool down from its malignant post-hardcore snide and clamorous cataclysm – and you can practically feel Francis loosening their necktie and smashing their head against some imaginary wall. It’s menace and dementia on the “Touch Me I’m Sick”-scale.
Equally compelling is the more restrained “The Body Is A Structure”, which anchors its squirming guitar plucks into a bluesy mid-tempo groove, very much recollecting The Birthday Party at their most sinister and primal. But then, DITZ ante up the tempo with some gleefully evil-sounding guitar stabs, before the tempo shifts into a more torrential sequence – you can practically feel Francis falling to their knees to witness the foul energies escape whatever crevice confined them earlier in the song. And in the end, the whole thing explodes into an almost nu-metal torrent-of-noise that leans heavily into pure shrilling discord.
It’s exactly the kind of fantastic build-up you’d expect DITZ to top on the seven-and-a-half minute closer “britney”, which starts promising with a parched, distorted drum beat and a dark guitar interlude – which continues promptly in the shape of buzzing synths. It’s a kind of bold left turn Gilla Band do time and time again on their latest – and greatest – LP Most Normal (on songs like “The Weirds” for example) without sacrificing the music’s tension. Unfortunately, DITZ display no such restraint, vaulting compulsively back into their drab umbrella-stoner rock whims. You’d wish they would bend more towards minimalism, textures and repetition, which – once carefully isolated – evokes a more urgent picture. “britney” does however hint, that with a little more care, patience, and time, DITZ could’ve forged their own answer to a “Sunglasses” or “Good Morning Captain” here.
Which brings us back to the flexibility and empowerment of artists presenting their projects in whatever format they so wish – whether it’s 30-minute albums or the 90-minute EPs. That being said, I do feel there’s a disconcerting climate of bands being brought along by the industry at a pace detrimental to their creative bandwidth. On Never Exhale, DITZ sound like they’re running on a treadmill at maximum speed, and in a bid to keep up, stumble into knee-jerk turns to some less-than-exciting tendencies perpetuated from their first release. In a healthier ecosystem, you can’t help but think Never Exhale might have been an excellent EP instead of a mediocre album, had there been an intent to cut some of meat off of the bone.
That said: the fact that the record’s peaks are as thrilling as they are should say something about DITZ’s mettle and spunk. Because puking up an album at the reportedly suffocating circumstances that spawned these songs is never an easy thing, taste be damned. There’s no reason not to believe that with a longer run-up to stockpile good ideas, Never Exhale could have marked that requisite big leap from their debut. Instead DITZ seem stuck in an infinite roundabout, circling round and round and round. In such a frantic tailspin, good luck shattering the current fatigue of post-punk/noise music mired in its own feedback loop of rage and discontent.
Never Exhale‘s greatest strengths spark encouragement that DITZ will eventually figure it out find their course, especially when they can learn to curb their itchy trigger fingers. Hopefully, once time is nigh to make album number three, DITZ will breathe easy and take a more scenic route. Because they certainly have enough junk in their trunk to put themselves on the map alongside their fellow racket-making peers.