Drew Daniel loves asking questions. All of his records under his moniker of The Soft Pink Truth come with a query in the title: Do You Party?; Why Do The Heathen Rage?; Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This?; Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase? Daniel’s newest record is no different, pondering what seems like a barbed question during a time when global turmoil and tragedy keeps outdoing itself. Can Such Delightful Times Go On Forever? Daniel asks with his latest LP. It’s a deliberately probing question though, Daniel reflecting on what pleasure means during these times and what function music can provide against a backdrop of rising facism and genocide.
The answer, though not definitive and simple, is a familiar one. Like with Daniel’s music before, the solution is to provide what refuge is possible, to rally against destruction by creating beauty that can’t be touched by hands that hate its very existence. Daniel creates his own tiny communal spaces with his music, inviting friends and allies to the dancefloor to be with him and others. Weather the storm by hunkering down together. Similarly Delightful Times is queer sanctuary, an album with roots in poetry, electronica, and cinema.
Sonically it’s also a surprise detour from Daniel, a feat in itself from a musician who – both by himself and as part of Matmos with his husband M.C. Schmidt – has always been verging (and converging) into new boundaries. Continuing on a trail of genre experimentalism, Daniel takes a foray into the classical on his latest album. It’s a curious and searching record full of players from across the globe: String arrangements by Istanbul-based artist and player Ulas Kurugullu, harpists Neleta Ortiz and Cecilia Cuccolini, piano from Koye Berry and M.C. Schmidt, guitarist Bill Orcutt, and strings played by Kurugullu and the Ebu String Quartet from the Peabody Institute. It’s avant chamber music that at times feels like a soundtrack for a missing film, a score for a contemporary dance piece yet to be choreographed, music for a quirky educational documentary.
As a listening experience in one sweep, the album fascinates and lulls the listener in equal measure. Moments across the near 40 minute runtime pique your attention and are dazzling in a peculiar way: across 10 minutes the ambitious “Phrygian Ganymede” evokes Bernard Herrmann Hitchockian film scores and Kevin Barnes’ avant experimental output on Paralytic Stalks; golden shimmers emerge on “Orchard” as Bill Orcutt’s guitar details a landscape over a bed of woodwind; “L’esprit De L’escalier” bobs along from percussion to pizzicato strings, hopping about an indeterminable scale with a childish playfulness. Opening track “Mere Survival Is Not Enough” comes complete with rubbery, buoyant electronic bass (courtesy of Zack Rowden) and Europop piano, offering itself as a bridge between old work and new. As strings enter, it begins to soar lightly, opening out into a wider space before high pitch birdsong trickles in at the very end.
Hearing Daniel approach music in a different way is worth time for those following his ever-evolving discography, but after a few spins through, Delightful Times doesn’t seem to build on its initial appeal. Hearing Neleta Ortiz and Cecilia Cuccolini’s sublime harp playing loses no power with repetition, nor does hearing the way Daniel slows down the sounds on “Time Inside the Violet” to bring about a peaceful calm. But after a while, despite a lot of sudden shrieks and staccato bursts of strings, it all mostly falls into the background. That’s not necessarily a slight; there are moments of stillness and sedate tranquility that are almost luxuriant (see the respite of rising strings on “Underneath II” or the fittingly heaven-like wordless coos and soft strings on “And by and by a Cloud Takes All Away”). Would it be ideal to have these moments stretched out further? Or to have a full record of this near-ambient calm to sit in? Answers on a postcard; they are just more questions for Daniel to add to the ever-growing list.
