Track Of The Day MEAGER BENEFITS
Lyon based DIY lo-fi coldwave one-man band of Theo Parlier, under his alias Meager Benefits, is going to release, a little more than 2 years from the latest LP “Crawling”, his fourth album, “Station”, due out, Cassette & Digital, on June 4, 2021, via Toulouse independent label Hidden Bay Records.
Theo crafts, with distinctive flair, refined and imaginative icy and spectral post-punk realms, vaguely lysergic, which organically vary from brooding atmospheric and ethereal drifts to turbulent and piercing bass-laden rhythmic progressions, that somehow amazingly sound like a guitar for the uninitiated of us, in obscure and claustrophobic crescendo, often permeated by bewitching ethnic hints.
The first preview, while here and there retains its vague hints to early 4AD, the Cure, Joy Division and The Banshees, relegate the synthetic element in the background, if not for the rhythmic minimalism of an obsessive, terse drum machine, while an energetic and sinuous dizzying intertwine of layered lines of bass guitar, ramble and sway up and down, sharp and harmonious in their clear yet disturbingly gloomy essentiality, just tormented by sparse encircling chilling sound effects along with cryptic and suffered chants.
Steady punchy snare beats steer the hypnotic and wandering drive into the glacial darkness cutting through by the ominous and vibrant weave of haunting reverberant sharp twangs and swirling sparkling arabesques, rife with middle eastern breathes, sliding into see-sawing swarms of abrasive shimmering riffs that writhe and stretch somberly over uncanny, hypnotic strung out vocalizations, to blur eerie frequencies through layering enigmatic emotional outpouring into ceremonial, droning intensity.
Meager Benefits‘ 4th full-length“Station” is slated for release, Cassette & Digital, on June 4, 2021, via Toulouse‘s Hidden Bay Records.
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