AGRICULTURE – THE SPIRITUAL SOUND

(Andy Synn navigates both the hype and the hate surrounding the new album from Agriculture)

If there’s one thing I’ve learned during my time here at NCS – beyond just how much DGR loves …And Oceans – it’s that you can’t (and, often, shouldn’t) pre-judge a band based on its press-releases.

Case in point, the way that Agriculture were immediately hyped-up as “the next big thing” when they appeared on the scene – combining the suggestion that the band’s inevitable success was a foregone conclusion with an almost “pick me” like intimation that they “weren’t like other Black Metal bands” – felt more like a cynical attempt to astroturf a bandwagon rather than cultivate a reliable fanbase.

And while the band themselves didn’t necessarily help matters – the whole “spiritual sound of ecstatic Black Metal” thing quickly became a meme unto itself – I’ve never had any reason to question their integrity or their sincerity… even if their creativity hasn’t always been properly harnessed to its best effect.

But that (the latter part I mean, not the former) might just be about to (finally) change.

As (constructively) critical as I may have been before – you can read what I wrote about their self-titled album here –  and as controversial as this may be, it truly feels to me like The Spiritual Sound is our first real chance to experience Agriculture in something close to their final form, as opposed to watching an ambitious, but perhaps unprepared, young band stumble their way through their early growing pains in the public eye.

That doesn’t mean that album #2 is perfect, by any means… if anything I continue to find myself incredibly frustrated by the way that “My Garden” opens things with a complete misifre that continues to repeat the same mistakes which have often prevented their previous material from achieving it’s full potential (in this case awkwardly and artificially mashing together disparate parts taken from different genres in a desperate attempt to seem “avant garde” but which ultimately reads less as “charmingly eclectic” and more “jarringly disconnected”).

And while I’m sure it will have as many defenders – it’s hard to admit when the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes, after all – as it does detractors, to me it’s doubly frustrating to see them kicking off what is otherwise a very good album (featuring some of what is both their most captivating and consistently high quality work) by falling back on bad habits and simply throwing ideas at the wall in the hope that something will stick… because they’re better than that (and much of the rest of the record goes on to prove it).

Take, “Flea”, for example, which actually does manage to combine all its different threads – Black Metal, Math Rock, Post Punk, Post Rock, Shoegaze, and more – into an unconventional, yet creatively coherent, whole, which blasts and broods and bristles with euphoric (if not “ecstatic”) energy (particularly when it comes to its wild lead-guitar work), while its subsequent smooth transition into the more streamlined, punky Post-Black Metal of “Micah (5:15am)” (another early highlight) demonstrates that they definitely can conjure a more organic sense of flow when they’re of a mind to.

A big part of that sense of “flow”, of course, is also a sense of contrast, and thankfully that’s just what the darker, doomier, and crustier strains of “The Weight” offer, with the song providing a welcome change of pace – even as it goes arguably even heavier, and harsher (with the maddening solo work just adding an even greater sense of barely-controlled-chaos) – between “Micah (5:15am)” and the decidedly un-serene sounds of “Serenity”.

And just in case you’re thinking that I’m harbouring some barely sublimated animus towards the band for not sticking to strict genre boundaries (this is the point, I guess, where I’m supposed to say that “some of my favourite bands dont adhere to the traditional scene spectrum”) I should probably point out that the gloomy, My Bloody Valentine-esquemeditation of “Dan’s Love Song” is a perfectly placed (and paced) piece of nuanced, non-metallic introspection, while the minamlist/maximalist back-and-forth of “Bodhidharma” (which both simmers and soars, showcasing a gift for using both negative space and nerve-jangling noise in equal measure) makes for one of the best songs the band have ever recorded.

Sure, there’s a few moments which feel a little self-indulgent, without adding any real substance to the album – the title-track is 29 seconds of hazy distortion that merely extends the intro to “Dan’s Love Song” unnecessarily, while the obviously heartfelt “Hallelujah” is, if we’re being honest, little more than extended outro to its superior predecessor – and there’s still a nagging sense that, once you strip away all they hype and self-promotion (though, in their favour, at least they haven’t issued… shudder… a manifesto yet) they’re not quite as unique or innovative as some of their more ardent fans would like you to believe (especially if you have even a passing familiarity with the likes of Alcest, Lantlôs, or Envy, to name a few of their more obvious inspirations).

But there’s a much greater sense of completeness to The Spiritual Sound (even if there’s a bit of an awkward divide between the differening approaches of the band’s two main songwriters at times) which serves to elevate it above the rest of their work, especially during stand-outs like the aforementioned “Micah (5:15am)”, “Bodhidharma”, and the spellbinding sonic duality of magnificent closer “The Reply”, all of which are well worth the price of admission and actually justify much of the often excessive hype surrounding the band.

So I guess what I’m ultimately trying to say is that whatever your previous stance was towards them – whether dedicated disciple, fairweather fan or committed critic – it might be best to consider this record as a sort of soft-reboot and an opportunity to finally experience the real “spiritual sound” of the band as we were always meant to… because it feels like Agriculture, flawed as they may be, may have finally found themselves at last.