yeah — this is the second eel people post this week. you got a problem with that? just two days ago, i posted about eel people’s new ep and new member (matt falkowski). that news came as a surprise, especially because it was just a few days before a planned and hyped album: a post & destructive cycle. eel people — up to this point a kind of solo vehicle for rex thurstan — is a busy and productive project. since late 2018, thurstan has written and recorded three albums (including forgiving my humanity and new hit record) and an ep. those three records have formed, according to thurstan, a trilogy. in that regard, a posh & destructive cycle ends a story that was started with new hit record. thematically it ends, but also logistically: with the inclusion of matt falkowski, the next album from eel people we get might be quite different than anything we’ve heard so far.
“i hope you enjoy my favorite album,” is the only description we get from eel people’s bandcamp page for the album. and while that might seem like a fun little aside, i think it speaks loudly of eel people’s ethos. thurstan enjoys the music he makes: he wrote, recorded, mixed, and mastered the entire album (with the exception of mastering for one track, but more on that later). so even though a posh & destructive cycle contains several dark, serious themes (e.g., alienation, suicidal ideation, self-loathing), the album is bristling with… fun? i hate to use that word within this context, but you’ll hear it the moment you spin the record. eel people seems liberated by this musical expression, and that joy is hard to resist, even in moments of heartache. so you can see where the album’s name may come from: the album is stylish, but its interests are in how people fall apart and find ways to piece themselves back together.
here are my three favorite moments of a posh & destructive cycle:
“we don’t have to die”: first tracks are a way to play with listener’s expectations. you can play with that, if you want, or you can be completely upfront about what the listener is getting themselves into. with “we don’t have to die”, eel people is laying all their cards on the table: “this album will be different, and here’s how.” the song is a synthesized piece of pop perfection — which is already a deviation from the guitar-dominated work of eel people’s back catalog — and it makes its themes clear. as the chorus locks into place, we get a multi-sampled voice that thurstan bounces with, crooning about self-destruction and escaping from it. and with many artists using auto-tune to manipulate their voices in experimental ways, it’s a delight to see someone experimenting with vocal delivery in new ways. here, thurstan manipulates his voice to become both a harmony, a backing track, and an instrument all its own.
“thought i was misunderstood (but i misunderstood)”: when this track was released earlier this summer, it was one of my favorite songs of the year. and hey, it still is. its vocal melody and signature guitar riff are perfectly realized. part car seat headrest, part post-pavement malkmus, it’s a laid-back, cool anthem that is impossible not to sing along with. the song’s presence on a posh & destructive cycle is an intermission. stylistically and thematically it stands out from the album, and it effectively separates the album’s halves. it’s not the only guitar-forward track, with “body dysmorphic disorder” closing with a shredding solo, but it gives us a reminder of how far we’ve come from forgiving my humanity before diving right back in. that contrast is deliberate, too: it’s the only song mastered by another musician (greetings’ daniel carr).
“withdrawal / spider”: there’s a switch that happens around the 3:40 mark on this track that is easy to miss. these songs are separate but tied together by a seamless transition. and that’s representative of the album as a whole, as many of the songs flawlessly move from one song to the next. that level of consideration is something that i love about a posh & destructive cycle — the track sequencing, especially as “withdrawal / spider” leads into the acoustic finale — is impressive. that finale (“it’s okay”), by the way, is a stunning denouement that not only resolves the thematic tensions of the album, but it strips away the production completely. i was reminded of beck’s sea change — one of my very favorite albums — and how both of these musicians use musical cues to lead the themes and conversely, use the themes to lead the musical cues.
