Failure have long been fascinated with science fiction and how we’ll be living in the future (especially the one that’s already here). Their last full-length album, Wild Type Droid, refers to how we humans will be looked upon as wild types of androids and cyborgs in years to come. Robotics, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, space exploration, and, yes, music eventually will be so far advanced that what we have now will seem like it was created by people living on primitive plains.
“If everything’s true, then nothing is real. If nothing is true, then everything’s real,’ Ken Andrews sings on the album’s opener – “Water with Hands.” Right away, they start with a song that creates a sound only Failure seem capable of making: a combination of shoegaze, space rock, prog, and something indefinable that alters your perception. It’s not really psychedelia. It’s almost something alien.
Then along comes “Headstand” to lift you from the ground (“The simulation’s about to meet its maker.”). I can’t determine which causes more transcendence, Andrews’ bass, Greg Edwards‘ zero-gravity guitar work, or Kellii Scott‘s afterburner drumming. “A Lifetime of Joy” is almost a classic Failure “Segue” that bursts into another display of Scott’s excellent drumming on “Submarines” – a song about Andrews processing the COVID-19 pandemic (“I was so innocent before the plague…Can’t live in submarines forever.”) that crushes live.
“Bring Back the Sound” starts slow and a bit quiet, but it slowly builds the tension and fuzz around Andrews’ excellent vocal track on it. “Mercury Mouth” has Andrews angry at someone (possibly Donald Trump?) for distorting the truth and refusing to accept further deception (“You are a liar. Shut your mouth. There’s nothing silver about your tongue.”). The band crushes it, with Scott dropping some of his biggest fills on the album in it.
“Still undecided on the flight back from Seoul,” Andrew sings in the beginning of “Undecided,” instantly dropping us into a mystery. Why is he uncertain? And about what? It seems to be about a relationship, but not necessarily a romantic or sexual one – more one with himself and his relationship with the world, the rat race, and reconnecting with nature.
“Long Division” is the longest track on the album (five minutes-eleven seconds) and gets trippy the entire time. “We are hallucinations,” they sing on “Bad Translation.” This became the title of their live album and concert film, and it’s a concept Failure love to explore – Who are we, really? Where does technology end and humanity begin (or vice-versa)? “You cannot trust your senses,” they sing, “but you can let them go.” We don’t have to be inexorably linked to technology that only separates us. We can embrace what’s here and now.
The album closes with Edwards singing lead on the mostly acoustic “Half Moon.” It sounds melancholy at times and uplifting at others, distant at times and warm and fuzzy in certain moments.
The whole album is like that – bringing the coldness of space and loneliness and mixing it with the warmth of the sun and the strength found in presence and mindfulness. It’s cosmic and grounded, roaring and whispering, bright and dark.
Keep your mind open.
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