Chemtrails | The Joy of Sects | PNKSLM Recordings | January 2024
Chemtrails seem less like a band of flesh and blood people from our plane of reality and more like cut characters brought to life by Invader Zim’s most acid-addled storyboarder. Our protagonists are Mia Lust and Laura Orlova, partners in life, love, music, and theoretical physics (this is not a bit – they do what Sheldon Cooper does, sans the aggressive awkwardness). The setting? The whimpering mid-apocalyptic wasteland of the 2020s. The genre: animated absurdist black comedy. There’s certainly no shortage of vaguely disgruntled sociopolitical punk-adjacent music sprouting from the UK, but where so many bands drudge and sink into despondence, Manchester’s Chemtrails surrender to the populist delirium with a knowing wink. The Joy of Sects is satirical empathy, an exuberant infiltration of the pitiful mindset that gravitates towards loud voices that say nothing and ruin everything.
For the first time, Chemtrails brought in an outside producer for The Joy of Sects, namely Margo Broom. And while Broom’s work with Fat White Family and Big Joanie in recent years could sometimes be thin and strung-out, every aspect of this record’s sound is defined by a thick, overwhelming sweetness. Lust and Orlova pitch up their harmonized John Dwyer-esque yelps and brill building callbacks to helium-huffing heights, and the liberal use of reverb smacks of sour gobstoppers: sugary, tangy, built to last. Even before hooking up with Broom, Lust had been using Fat White Family’s 2014 single “Touch the Leather” for reference. A fortuitous meeting at their old bassist’s wedding seems to have led to a match made in heaven, with Chemtrails yanking that dry yet robust Spaghetti Western sound back out of Broom and encasing it in layers of gooey caramel.
But if the energy and aesthetic of The Joy of Sects sits somewhere between The Gun Club, early-2000s Puffy AmiYumi, and late-2000s Osees, the playfully morbid wit is Chemtrails’ own. They build several tracks off of bitter, silly little puns: “Detritus Andronicus,” “Business Class War Paint,” “Mushroom Cloud Nine,” etc. The endless cycle of violence, late-stage capitalism, corporate stoogery, and impending nuclear armageddon are all addressed with the seriousness of a cartoon mallet to the dome. Hopelessness is a gag, or maybe even a beach rager if you’ve got a keg and a volleyball net. Lust frequently roleplays as villainous caricatures who seek to turn the world into their playpen, reclaiming the joy they’ve stolen. Amidst the satisfyingly plodded rhythm of “Bang Bang,” she’s an empty-headed, pole-humping accelerationist tech bro who does yoga on Mondays and wants to colonize the moon (that such a rich and powerful buffoon could exist is, of course, ridiculous).
The Joy of Sects starts incredibly strong with its first four tracks – all infectious as the Black Plague and sharp as a guillotine – but its flesh does sag a bit in the middle. “Mushroom Cloud Nine” and “Pink Whale” are minimalistic to an almost jarring degree when placed against the album’s surrounding material. That’s not to say each is without merit. The juxtaposition between the witchy, summoning chants of “Fata Morgana” early and angelic, “cloudy” harmonies later on in “Mushroom Cloud Nine” is a great mood play. “Pink Whale” leads with a pretty limp riff, but the tone is killer, as heavy and bluesy as Jimmy Page but still dripping with enough syrup to set it apart. But lyrically and structurally, they’re sparse. They don’t quite fit among the punchier pop cuts or the more sprawling jams to come, lacking the sturdy disposition and badinage of the former and the uncontainable vigor of the latter. “Join Our Death Cult” is as fun as sin but ends just as it feels like it should build into something more. Maybe this is intentional: as upbeat as it is, “Join Our Death Cult” is still a tongue-in-cheek glorification of “running full pace off a limestone cliff-face,” so perhaps a lack of resolution is the point. It’s just not nearly as satisfying as the Rasputin outro to “Business Class War Paint.”
But things turn around in a big way with “Superhuman Superhighway.” A five-and-a-half minute exercise in propulsion, fury, and chaos, it’d slot right in on Carrion Crawler/The Dream, distinguishing itself just enough through krautrock hypnotism, which the band temporarily dispels with the occasional Bikini Kill-esque outburst. It teems with frustration, with the utterly exhausting dehumanization wrought by corporate interest, manipulative grifters, and slimy marketing ploys. By the time it hits the extended jam section, the guitars shriek like the tires of cars spinning out at 140mph, giving way to the unreasonable pressure before crashing upon the unwitting people below. The “Apocalypstick”/”Post-Apocalypstick” pairing might be the best way to introduce anyone to Chemtrails. Lust delights in wanton murder with such swagger in the first section, as if she were Divine in Pink Flamingos, and then flies off the rails on “Post-Apocalypstick,” flaring organs leading the charge, a mountain of bodies left in its wake. The band slows things down on “Endless Stream of the Bizarre,” but even though it doesn’t play to their most obvious strengths, it’s still an effective closer. It’s dramatic as hell, dropping us somewhere between a queer cabaret club and an old west saloon, and there’s a Mexican standoff, and everyone is holding their breath. When The Joy of Sects so often benefits from this level of vibrancy, wit, passion, and panache, it’s easy to forgive some occasional underwriting.
Note: This review was originally published in Rantipole.
Travis Shosa is a writer from Spring, TX. They are the EIC and managing editor of Dodo Eraser. Their creative writing is featured in Stanchion, Maudlin House, HAD, Bending Genres, The Bulb Region, HAWKEYE, Some Words and lots of other cool places. They have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Their journalism has been featured in Pitchfork, Bandcamp Daily, The Line of Best Fit, PAPER, and others.
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