Bomethius’ sixth record in as many years takes its title from a slew of apocryphal centuries-old quotes about the architecture of St. Paul’s cathedral. Despite its suspect authenticity, the phrase is often used as a shorthand for illustrating the evolution of language — a modern rendering would read more like “sublime, stately, and magnificently
Bomethius’ sixth record in as many years takes its title from a slew of apocryphal centuries-old quotes about the architecture of St. Paul’s cathedral. Despite its suspect authenticity, the phrase is often used as a shorthand for illustrating the evolution of language — a modern rendering would read more like “sublime, stately, and magnificently devised” — but as scholars continue to debate its textual pedigree, it just as easily represents the matchwood frailty of information and testimony. With Awful, Pompous, & Artificial (APA), Bomethius embraces both implications — words in flux along with the indeterminate anxieties of narrative — to craft a dynamic exploration of estrangement and the intangible devastation wrought by language in free fall.
Like Intimatitudes (2017) and Sweet Nothings (2019), APA begins with a brief, though far more elaborate, vocalized instrumental, “Wasted Words,” that casts the scene for the rest of the record. Like a funeral march for some flyblown Soviet secretary, the somber dirge plods along step after step, accompanied by feathered toms, delicate stringed harmonies, and a keening falsetto that recalls the sopranos of Mozart’s finest Kyries. While the wordless openers of Bomethius’ earlier records parodied the hollowness of simplistic childhood assurances (“Empty Promises”) or celebrated an ambivalence toward soul-crushing turmoil (“Sweet Nothings”), “Wasted Words” rings with genuine grief that — at least for now — transcends the limits of verse. It’s a requiem for the priceless loss of shared sense and mutual understanding — an estrangement from the purpose of words and the people beyond their reach — that can only resolve with a weary sigh.
With its lush soundscape of violins, guitars, soaring vocals, and background harmonies, “Barren Field” recalls the ruinous religious experiments targeted throughout inadiquit. A soliloquy compares the songwriter to a hardscrabble tract of clearcut waste — forever lifeless and useless, condemned before creation, where even signs of life are proof of decay — before concluding with a hopeful prayer for moving beyond a youth choked by self-loathing and fatalistic zealotry.
Farther down this spiritual journey, “The Upside Down” pulses with eldritch synths and beats reminiscent of a John Carpenter film score. Evoking obvious comparisons with the infernal fears and monsters in Stranger Things, these eerie electronic elements guide the listener through an autopsy on bygone selfhood — the identities we’ve long since quit and disowned but whose wraiths and wounds can still haunt our best moments. Distorted violins and guitars translate the “stricken land” and “weeping sand” of “Barren Field” into a “Fertile Crescent of anxiety” and “abusive tendencies,” where savage creeds run amok to poison every good thing, keeping us “small and indebted / caged and abandoned.” Following a faraway whistle solo, the moans and sighs of a clarinet close out the number with a graveside lullaby for a past life — severed, slain, and laid to rest.
“As Bad as They Say” channels the noir vibe of an after-hours cabaret, where silken vocals set to the swaggering plucks of an upright limn the illogical limit of abortive dialogue. Plaintive violin, squeaky-clean jazz guitar improvisations, and the mischievous whine of a muted trumpet complement whimsical piano and clarinet riffs to sketch a dismal scene where information amounts to nothing more than a virus that people exploit to infect and crush others. When we’re “rehearsing all of our lines for a show at the end of time” and “fitting our pieces into puzzles of our own making,” the tragedy isn’t any given falsehood so much as it is the instability and irrelevance of truth. Following a punctuated lament, the nightclub elegy fizzles like a slow-burning fuse that’s out of line and leads to nothing.
Closer to a traditional ballad, “Liquor & Blood” narrows the scope to traveling by road — a part of everyday existence that we constantly will into our lives despite its fondness for bouts of chaos that indiscriminately and without warning alter timelines and claim souls. In some of the record’s most tranquil, stripped-down moments, a series of ironic verses speak to this savage powerlessness we absentmindedly accept just to get through the day before the track erupts into a kind of barrelhouse anthem to amphibian roadkill — the “brave little turtle” smitten for his pluck and naivete, which earned him a curbside grave.
In “Pseudo-Anonymity,” Bomethius’ most vivid and dynamic instrumental yet, dueling acoustic guitars trace the emotions and internal dialogue of estrangement — social relations that can only proceed from the maintenance of clashing notions: two-way invisibility despite mutual recognition. From a seethe of riffs, galloping basslines, and mounting cymbal crashes unfolds the anguish of processing a trauma that’s both voluntary and involuntary, repulsive and attractive — something to resist and welcome at once. Cycling through anger, guilt, regret, longing, and loneliness, this rhapsody of rags navigates many twists and snarls before boiling over in an access of agony. The outburst quickly collapses from exhaustion, after which the piece drifts into a more disciplined state of reflection voiced by wistful woodwinds. The tranquil tones might sound like self-assurance, but they belie an undercurrent of turmoil in abeyance — a reprieve that’s still scrabbling and straining for a definitive remedy yet to be found.
Like the warmth and aroma of a grandmother’s embrace, “It’s Raining in the South Again” makes up the other side of the record’s complaint against schism and alienation. Keys and vocals waft like warm butter and sorghum alongside a soothing sax and brushed snare in a celebration of undefiled fellowship. While they mourn the fleeting quality of our most cherished moments, the verses also acknowledge that their sweetness stems in part from their scarcity. It’s a paradox, one of the enduring mysteries of time and friendship, and like the track’s final measures, it always eludes our grasp and wanders afield — a will-o’-the-wisp comedy carried beyond the horizon by sparse electric tones that gleam like stars over a lonely midnight highway.
The record’s lone moment of laughter and levity, “The Pigeon” turns a failed attempt to catch a bus into a surreal descent into insecurity and delirium. After kicking off with a sample from Tom Lehrer’s “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” an otherwise mundane tale of bad luck and poor timing rapidly picks up speed like the fleet feet of a latecomer, just a half-block away from his stop, whose bus blows past in a spray of diesel exhaust and groans down the street anyway. Frolicsome whistling gives way to theatrical guitarwork as the sidewalk sprint builds into a legit rocker that salutes the absurdity and instability of so much commonplace experience.
A proper piano ballad in the tradition of Randy Newman and Tom Waits, “MMD” rings with traces of ragtime mischief in a twisted epistle to broken family ties. While a sure left hand layers an evocative medley of checkered chord inversions, the right romps about the staff amid barbed stanzas that warble, “Mother, mother dearest / Do you miss your golden parrot?” — everything rising and falling, slowing and quickening, with the dynamics of dispute, protest, and entreaty.
APA’s third and final instrumental, “Oh! To Sing Again!” follows with a straightforward celebration of release. In a welcome break from the record’s chronicle of strife and spite, six- and 12-string guitars sheen with delicate fingerpicking and crisp harmonics that glory in the simple freedoms of speech and melody. Though the brisk duet likely alludes to the singer’s struggles with a vocal polyp that resulted in surgery and a prolonged period of forced silence and speech therapy, it’s also the sound of confidence — the resolve to keep moving, without fear, through life’s smother of words and conflicts.
Resolve is always easier from a distance, of course, and as the record draws to an end, antagonistic voices continue to wrestle. Mixing metaphors from chess, poker, and combat — rolls, calls, bets, cards, pawns, swords, and beheadings — “The Game” returns to the battlegrounds of earlier tracks. Toxic worldviews and internecine discord become one and the same immutable adversary in a rigged tournament, where contenders are “gutted and canned / Thrown out to the birds, then chaff in the wind” as they make the only moves available to them in a fixed sham of a contest. Despite the impasses of separation and enmity, the track ascends into a rousing 8-bit Nintendo victory sequence that cheers on those who endure undaunted, even in solitude.
In response, “Torn,” sinks into the scars of doubt and misgiving for Bomethius’ most mature and refined love song to date, a sincere hymn to a beloved that praises the radical healing power of mutually vulnerable affection. The simple grace of “Torn” then yields to the naked coda, “Fare Thee Well,” a love letter to the departed — plain and unaccompanied, like a solitary voice on a six-string resounding from a fire escape — who still tarry in “that little dungeon of fear.”
In its spectacle of estrangement from discourse and blood, APA stews and surges with a ferment of earnest, fiery voices that reflect the troubling spiritual mechanics of fruitless utterances — messages that cannot be received, even if they are delivered. It’s a deadlock at the gates of purgatory, a dilemma bred for bedlam and spleen, if not for the truth and communion that we always somehow still retain. Cumbersome and slippery, evermore emerging but never complete, truth and communion rarely look or behave exactly as we’d like. But unlike so many of the specters that persist in haunting us, they’re real, and they’re forever ready for the harvest should we choose to glean from their furrows.
Like Intimatitudes (2017) and Sweet Nothings (2019), APA begins with a brief, though far more elaborate, vocalized instrumental, “Wasted Words,” that casts the scene for the rest of the record. Like a funeral march for some flyblown Soviet secretary, the somber dirge plods along step after step, accompanied by feathered toms, delicate stringed harmonies, and a keening falsetto that recalls the sopranos of Mozart’s finest Kyries. While the wordless openers of Bomethius’ earlier records parodied the hollowness of simplistic childhood assurances (“Empty Promises”) or celebrated an ambivalence toward soul-crushing turmoil (“Sweet Nothings”), “Wasted Words” rings with genuine grief that — at least for now — transcends the limits of verse. It’s a requiem for the priceless loss of shared sense and mutual understanding — an estrangement from the purpose of words and the people beyond their reach — that can only resolve with a weary sigh.
With its lush soundscape of violins, guitars, soaring vocals, and background harmonies, “Barren Field” recalls the ruinous religious experiments targeted throughout inadiquit. A soliloquy compares the songwriter to a hardscrabble tract of clearcut waste — forever lifeless and useless, condemned before creation, where even signs of life are proof of decay — before concluding with a hopeful prayer for moving beyond a youth choked by self-loathing and fatalistic zealotry.
Farther down this spiritual journey, “The Upside Down” pulses with eldritch synths and beats reminiscent of a John Carpenter film score. Evoking obvious comparisons with the infernal fears and monsters in Stranger Things, these eerie electronic elements guide the listener through an autopsy on bygone selfhood — the identities we’ve long since quit and disowned but whose wraiths and wounds can still haunt our best moments. Distorted violins and guitars translate the “stricken land” and “weeping sand” of “Barren Field” into a “Fertile Crescent of anxiety” and “abusive tendencies,” where savage creeds run amok to poison every good thing, keeping us “small and indebted / caged and abandoned.” Following a faraway whistle solo, the moans and sighs of a clarinet close out the number with a graveside lullaby for a past life — severed, slain, and laid to rest.
“As Bad as They Say” channels the noir vibe of an after-hours cabaret, where silken vocals set to the swaggering plucks of an upright limn the illogical limit of abortive dialogue. Plaintive violin, squeaky-clean jazz guitar improvisations, and the mischievous whine of a muted trumpet complement whimsical piano and clarinet riffs to sketch a dismal scene where information amounts to nothing more than a virus that people exploit to infect and crush others. When we’re “rehearsing all of our lines for a show at the end of time” and “fitting our pieces into puzzles of our own making,” the tragedy isn’t any given falsehood so much as it is the instability and irrelevance of truth. Following a punctuated lament, the nightclub elegy fizzles like a slow-burning fuse that’s out of line and leads to nothing.
Closer to a traditional ballad, “Liquor & Blood” narrows the scope to traveling by road — a part of everyday existence that we constantly will into our lives despite its fondness for bouts of chaos that indiscriminately and without warning alter timelines and claim souls. In some of the record’s most tranquil, stripped-down moments, a series of ironic verses speak to this savage powerlessness we absentmindedly accept just to get through the day before the track erupts into a kind of barrelhouse anthem to amphibian roadkill — the “brave little turtle” smitten for his pluck and naivete, which earned him a curbside grave.
In “Pseudo-Anonymity,” Bomethius’ most vivid and dynamic instrumental yet, dueling acoustic guitars trace the emotions and internal dialogue of estrangement — social relations that can only proceed from the maintenance of clashing notions: two-way invisibility despite mutual recognition. From a seethe of riffs, galloping basslines, and mounting cymbal crashes unfolds the anguish of processing a trauma that’s both voluntary and involuntary, repulsive and attractive — something to resist and welcome at once. Cycling through anger, guilt, regret, longing, and loneliness, this rhapsody of rags navigates many twists and snarls before boiling over in an access of agony. The outburst quickly collapses from exhaustion, after which the piece drifts into a more disciplined state of reflection voiced by wistful woodwinds. The tranquil tones might sound like self-assurance, but they belie an undercurrent of turmoil in abeyance — a reprieve that’s still scrabbling and straining for a definitive remedy yet to be found.
Like the warmth and aroma of a grandmother’s embrace, “It’s Raining in the South Again” makes up the other side of the record’s complaint against schism and alienation. Keys and vocals waft like warm butter and sorghum alongside a soothing sax and brushed snare in a celebration of undefiled fellowship. While they mourn the fleeting quality of our most cherished moments, the verses also acknowledge that their sweetness stems in part from their scarcity. It’s a paradox, one of the enduring mysteries of time and friendship, and like the track’s final measures, it always eludes our grasp and wanders afield — a will-o’-the-wisp comedy carried beyond the horizon by sparse electric tones that gleam like stars over a lonely midnight highway.
The record’s lone moment of laughter and levity, “The Pigeon” turns a failed attempt to catch a bus into a surreal descent into insecurity and delirium. After kicking off with a sample from Tom Lehrer’s “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” an otherwise mundane tale of bad luck and poor timing rapidly picks up speed like the fleet feet of a latecomer, just a half-block away from his stop, whose bus blows past in a spray of diesel exhaust and groans down the street anyway. Frolicsome whistling gives way to theatrical guitarwork as the sidewalk sprint builds into a legit rocker that salutes the absurdity and instability of so much commonplace experience.
A proper piano ballad in the tradition of Randy Newman and Tom Waits, “MMD” rings with traces of ragtime mischief in a twisted epistle to broken family ties. While a sure left hand layers an evocative medley of checkered chord inversions, the right romps about the staff amid barbed stanzas that warble, “Mother, mother dearest / Do you miss your golden parrot?” — everything rising and falling, slowing and quickening, with the dynamics of dispute, protest, and entreaty.
APA’s third and final instrumental, “Oh! To Sing Again!” follows with a straightforward celebration of release. In a welcome break from the record’s chronicle of strife and spite, six- and 12-string guitars sheen with delicate fingerpicking and crisp harmonics that glory in the simple freedoms of speech and melody. Though the brisk duet likely alludes to the singer’s struggles with a vocal polyp that resulted in surgery and a prolonged period of forced silence and speech therapy, it’s also the sound of confidence — the resolve to keep moving, without fear, through life’s smother of words and conflicts.
Resolve is always easier from a distance, of course, and as the record draws to an end, antagonistic voices continue to wrestle. Mixing metaphors from chess, poker, and combat — rolls, calls, bets, cards, pawns, swords, and beheadings — “The Game” returns to the battlegrounds of earlier tracks. Toxic worldviews and internecine discord become one and the same immutable adversary in a rigged tournament, where contenders are “gutted and canned / Thrown out to the birds, then chaff in the wind” as they make the only moves available to them in a fixed sham of a contest. Despite the impasses of separation and enmity, the track ascends into a rousing 8-bit Nintendo victory sequence that cheers on those who endure undaunted, even in solitude.
In response, “Torn,” sinks into the scars of doubt and misgiving for Bomethius’ most mature and refined love song to date, a sincere hymn to a beloved that praises the radical healing power of mutually vulnerable affection. The simple grace of “Torn” then yields to the naked coda, “Fare Thee Well,” a love letter to the departed — plain and unaccompanied, like a solitary voice on a six-string resounding from a fire escape — who still tarry in “that little dungeon of fear.”
In its spectacle of estrangement from discourse and blood, APA stews and surges with a ferment of earnest, fiery voices that reflect the troubling spiritual mechanics of fruitless utterances — messages that cannot be received, even if they are delivered. It’s a deadlock at the gates of purgatory, a dilemma bred for bedlam and spleen, if not for the truth and communion that we always somehow still retain. Cumbersome and slippery, evermore emerging but never complete, truth and communion rarely look or behave exactly as we’d like. But unlike so many of the specters that persist in haunting us, they’re real, and they’re forever ready for the harvest should we choose to glean from their furrows.
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Barren Field 4:410:00/4:41
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Pseudo-Anonymity 6:210:00/6:21
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The Pigeon 2:320:00/2:32