Dirty Beaches is the solo project of Taiwan native Alex Zhang Hungtai. It's interesting to note his origin, because when listening to Badlands it's easy to forget you're listening to a man of Taiwanese descent, and not the offspring of say-- Roy Orbison or Ian Curtis. Badlands is essentially his first proper album after a series of admirable, but limited LPs and cassettes on smaller labels. Hungtai appropriately tones down the caustic elements of his preceding work resulting in Badlands; an atmospheric set of hauntingly saturated lo-fi, fluently balancing a fine line between experimental abrasiveness and hallucinogenic pop.
Throughout most of Badlands, vintage guitar loops dwell in its vignette of ghostly 50s parlour shops and oil stations. The first three tracks all utilize that quality to accent their subtle rhythms. Opener "Speedway King" gradually revolves a series of fragmented machine loops under a steamy drone, before a train blows loudly in the distance; allowing the rest of the album access through its spectral railway. "Horses" guides that cold, repetitive nature through a friendlier route, until the album's grooviest-- "Sweet 17"-- tightly rides a 60s surf riff, evoking drowsy polaroids of sun-soaked beaches. Hungtai croons his dusty pipes throughout these songs, and for the most part he's indecipherable; achieving a consistent phantom-like status in the process.
The album is most effective near the end of its relatively short run time, on the tracks "True Blue" and "Lord Knows Best". These are somewhat different entities compared to the often unsettling nature of the tracks that surround them. "Lord Knows Best" features an innocent sounding piano melody as Hungtai grieves lost love, sorrow, and forgiveness, until a subtle harmony mends the distress to a haunting melancholy. It's the kind of song the credits roll to. Although, the most overwhelming moment on the album is "True Blue", where Hungtai sounds as if he's tributing the rolling landscapes of lost highways, as Elvis rises from the dead to preform one last set; in a smoky, velvet-furnished lounge for a few deserving fans.
Badlands is an extremely promising album; securing a sense of excellence to come from Dirty Beaches in the future. The only thing holding the album back is a couple of its instrumentals; which sound like directionless experiments that don't to fully satisfy. Though these tracks as a whole work together effectively, each track pacing fluently into the next. At its core, Badlands is an album completely encased around its atmosphere; that thick haze of sentimental lust. Its varying moods throughout manage to melt into an equally gratifying impression of sorrow and reflection. In thought-- there's a man in the distance, behind the smoky veiled nostalgia and his foggy perspective, gray as night; he asks for acceptance, in an ever-confusing world.
[Dirty Beaches Blog]
[Buy Badlands from Zoo Music]
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