Forget by Oupa
LABEL: Fat Possum

It’s hard to know what feeling the dirge-like melancholy of Oupa’s Forget most evokes; maybe a cautious and false acceptance of the failures of the past , a surge of regret overcoming you until you collapse on the ground, false and uneasy smiles as you say goodnight. Forget is a record for those whiskey-soaked nights spent staring into a television that isn’t even plugged in, for aimless midnight car rides with no company and a broken radio.

With little more than repeating piano figures, sparse instrumentation, and his own haunted choir-boy voice, Yuck frontman Daniel Blumberg has created a reverb-soaked album of intense emotional impact, bringing to mind (for me) the first time I heard Bon Iver’s For Emma, or Cat Power’s early, booze-and-drug fueled songs that seemed to spring from the very darkest corners of her soul.

Oupa - Windows from Boiled Egg on Vimeo.

Of course, like those other artists, Oupa is not all doom and gloom — the album is very beautiful, full of deftly minimalist musicianship and lines that grow in intensity as they burrow their way into your brain. Song’s like “New Home” and “Physical” skit the border of pop, and the eleven minute closer “Those Are The Senses” builds into a controlled crescendo of noise and guitar feedback, giving the album it’s much needed closing catharsis.

I liked Yuck but I never got too into them, save for the song “Suicide Policeman,” a simple, surprising, and understated song in the middle of their debut, sandwiched between the shoe gaze and Dinosaur Jr riffing. That song was one of my favorite tracks of last year, and Forget build’s on everything I loved about it, the ghostly harmonies and dream-like mixing and sharp, moving, repeated lyrics. As the summer fades away and the cold months descend, it’s the perfect time for a little of the quiet self-reflection Forget provides.


REVIEWED BY MAT LINDENBERG
MAT’S FAVORITE TRACKS: “Forget” • “Driving” • “New Home”