molly picture — god of war
molly picture — god of war
molly picture, a collaboration between noise-pop band They Are Gutting a Body of Water and the indietronica-laden Hooky project, is a magnificent balancing act.
Not to say that the pair have nothing in common. Although TAGBW tends toward a sort of screwballed shoegaze slant, they also lean quite heavily into breakbeat and various electronic influences. Hooky, meanwhile, dabbles in far more than just pure electronica— there’s a certain saccharine, wall-of-sound kinship that permeates the work of both acts.
But molly picture is more than a lopsided attempt to combine the styles of two parallel acts. It is an exploration of meta-harmony, a serendipitous union that defies true categorization.
Beyond that, though, it’s simply an awesome listen.
There’s moments where you can hazard a guess at which realm the different components of each track spawn from. The opening, acoustic strums of “some Prank” root the listener pretty firmly in the atmosphere of TAGBW, but the driving bass and rhythm tracks, which kick in at around the 30-second mark, are what truly bring the track together— and those feel distinctly Hooky-inspired.
But if we’re going to attempt to parse out the individual contributions, we’re missing the point.
“defeater,” with its shrouded melodies and subdued rhythms, suspends the listener in a hazy sort of dream state— it takes on what was first teased out on “some Prank” in a more direct capacity, and although its lyrical content doesn’t advance much beyond the hook, it effectively sets an entrancing tone for the rest of the project.
“Lindas,” with its brittle brass synth setting the melody and piercing through the slowcore themes of the rest of the track, carries itself along in the mask of a strung-out MGMT track, but its pure elasticity and breath-drawing fuzz gives it the sort of depth that is sprawled across the entire TAGBW discography.
“new deal,” meanwhile, incorporates the trip-hop motifs that have laid dormant for most of the project— it is the album’s shortest song, at least in terms of its internal shifts, but it carries a weight that, in some ways, lends it status as the orbital center of the project.
“mischief night” opens with the swirling wind synths that trail across many of the project’s more ethereal moments, but when they’re met by an almost cataclysmic, thorny guitar riff, the track’s malleable center becomes almost impenetrable. It draws from the ambient toolbox that is a signature presence in the arsenals of both acts, but it is harsh and noisy in a way that’s almost morbidly fascinating.
But “Recital,” with its forlorn acoustic strummings, is what brings us back to where the project truly began. As much as molly picture may dip into varying landscapes, at its heart it is a tender and intricate sort of expression.
By the end, its slowcore, shoegaze, jungle, breakbeat, drum & bass, and indietronica roots are all tied together into one convoluted, but uncannily immaculate thematic knot. It avoids the temptation to be overtly amiable, and while Hooky’s synth-laden lead lines keep the whole thing firmly above board at most points, there is an underlying dismalness— a vague sense of despair, of washing up in a vaguely remembered red-brick apartment after three days of heavy drinking.
And yet as cohesive as it is, it never settles upon just one iteration of the balance between these sounds. It is constantly shifting, and each track offers a fresh re-invention of what god of war puts forth. molly picture is chimeric in that sense, but not in a confounding sort of way.
Its component parts become indistinguishable, and that is a beauty in and of itself.