Boris
Pink (Deluxe Edition)
Sargent House
Borisβ Deluxe Edition release of PinkΒ begins, as it did 10 years ago, with a goodbye. Thankfully for us listeners, their farewell was only ever fictional.
There are other moments in the Boris discography that impress β most notably the brooding, subterranean Flood (2000), the apoplectic Aluma no Uta (2003), and the kraut-influenced hypnotism on Amplifier Worship (1998) β but PinkΒ is the core of the apple. In fact, itβs so pithy and condensed at times that one feels compelled to slap & smooth a Garage Rock label on the whole thing, if only for sake of tidiness. But this is not garage rock; not any more than it is metal or post-rock or shoegaze or noise. This is the primary virtue of Pink: it resists subgenre.
Opener βFarewellβ is still, even on this deluxe expansion LP, the most structurally ambitious track on Pink, pouring over sonic edges like a writhing, senseless Sigur Ros ballad. This tunes the ears of the listeners to the sweet yet brittle frequencies that follow. Immediately after is the titular βPinkβ which is more representative of the album as a whole, and reaches levels of stoner-rock immaculacy that remind this critic of an angry Ty Segall.
A bit later we get βNothing Specialβ which sounds like a tribute to the elusive psycho-rock of Hot Changβs The Totality of Chang (1998), but misses the electronic element. The fascinating gear-down to slumbering doom metal on βBlackoutβ still feels jarring, though the effect is mitigated by what comes next: the stinging βAfterburner,β a track that lies at the crossroads of Piper-era Pink Floyd and βWhen The Musicβs Overβ by The Doors, with its hallucinogenic echo-claps and vocal warps.
Then there are the others: the groovy interlude βElectric,β the dumfounding βPseudo Bread,β the Jesus-and-the-Mary-Chain-on-a-skidoo βSix, Three Times,β the ambient meditation βMy Machineβ and the carpe diem eruption βJust Abandoned Myselfβ which, at a towering 18 minutes, is a fast-forward cavalcade of distortion and feedback, of canvas-breaking drums and lamenting vocal harmonies. It evolves into a kind of raga groove at the 7 minute mark before slowly disintegrating into a sinewy river of β and I say this with veneration β pure noise.
Instead of ending on the 18-minute monster βJust Abandoned Myself,β Boris pluck nine more tracks from their archive and appends the album with them. This transforms the ostensibly prosaic into the pointedly de-luxe.
Your Name Part 2 is a slow-core piece which opens the next nine tracks up β nine tracks which are simply icing on top of icing. Of these nine, the most impressive are βRoom Noise,β which summons pulsing pathos from a small loaf of ascending guitar work, and the guttural βN. F. Sorrowβ which spends its entire 7 minutes in what feels like 30 seconds. Rounding the whole thing off is the forlorn guitar poem βTiptoeβ β a gossamer of gentle feedback.
Boris have collaborated with the titanic Keiji Haino and, recently, Merzbow, a godfather of the Japanese noise tradition. The company they hold speaks to their esteemed seat in the noise rock theatre, and a reissue like this, while only a decade delayed, feels well earned. Looking down the line, one can clearly see how Deafheaven, I Am a Lake of Burning Orchids, and late-period Godspeed You! Black Emperor, among others, tilted their rudders in the noise-gaze wake that Borisβ body of work left behind.
More carping listeners will gawk at the lack of experimentation (which is to miss the driving ethos of the work) and more fawning listeners will claim a rebirth of the noise-rock canon (which is to dry hair by lighting it on fire). The takeaway, if there is one, is that Borisβ PinkΒ (Deluxe Edition) is a collection of songs, the qualities of which culminate into something critics have been and will continue to call βseminalβ. This is partly due to the way tropes of metal and garage-rock are made miscible with shoegaze and noise. It is also because the drums, guitars and vocals sound at once peloothered and mathy, sloppy and astute; PinkΒ is provocative yet easy to digest.
This decadeβs beating winds have extinguished the flames of many βclassicβ albums β Arcade Fireβs Funeral (2004), Green Dayβs American Idiot (2001), The Flaming Lipsβ Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002), to name a few. But Pink, by being as mutable as the very winds that berate it, will burn its amps until the power goes out.
ArtistΒ Links
SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: BORIS – PINK (DELUXE EDITION)
Nicholas Fazio
