He is an unreliable but evocative narrator, spelling out surreal, doom-laden imagery with eyes fixed on encroaching evil. From his vantage in the depths, he delivers cryptic pronouncements in a ragged drawl or croons over the beat with a corroded edge. McCartney doesn’t sing his lyrics so much as intone them, and rarely at the front of the mix. The Drin explore genre to especially playful effect on “Eyes Only for Space,” which incorporates the anti-gravity properties of dub to dramatize utter desolation: “The stars above are no match for the distance that I feel/When angels come to take me away and break me on the wheel.” He has a Liars-like approach to production, working from a punk blueprint but seeding his hooks with labored krautrock drumming and dissonant electronic flourishes. On previous records, McCartney teased out fascinating musical threads, incorporating murky EBM and sticky, shambling guitar pop. “Five and Dime Conjurers” roars to life off the back of a pummeling bassline and descends into a squall of tape delay and guitar feedback, while the deceptive “Peaceful, Easy, Feeling” foregrounds a relentless drumbeat against a backdrop of sulfurous reverb reminiscent of Throbbing Gristle’s “ Six Six Sixties.” But for all its simple pleasures, the record also features wild chasms of noise. “Venom,” “Stonewallin’,” and “Walk So Far” are riotously straightforward garage rock in the tradition of Thee Oh Sees’ John Dwyer, propelled by muscular bass, clattering drums, and jagged guitar riffs. The pleasures of Today My Friend are both immediate and obscurantist: melodic, hard-driving pop in service of eerie, unsolvable riddles.
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