(Andy Synn begins another new year here at NCS with a new album by an old favourite)
The turning of the year is all about change, about rebirth and renewal… and if one band’s career has epitomised all of these things it’s that of Black Metal’s very own “lost boys”, Ulver.
That being said, as a fan who has been following the band for a long time now (especially since they fell out of the Black Metal pram and landed somewhere much stranger) the group’s last couple of albums (Drone Activity excluded) have – in my august and learned opinion, at least – fallen into a bit of a creative rut, with their attempts to follow in the footsteps of 2017’s fantastic, career redefining, The Assassination of Julius Caesar resulting in increasingly diminishing returns.
Thankfully, however, if history has taught us anything about Ulver it’s that they’re never too far from another stylistic shift, and with the start of a new year comes the start of yet another new era for the band.
Or does it?
What’s particularly interesting about Neverland – to me, anyway – is the fact that it finds the band looking backwards in order to move forwards, often coming across like a sort of distant cousin or hitherto-forgotten companion-piece to 2000’s Perdition City… albeit one which is less J.G. Ballard and more J.M. Barrie.
Tracks like brooding opener “Fear In A Handful of Dust” and the drifting, dreamlike “Weeping Stone” in particular feel as though they’ve been pulled from an alternate reality where the band took a different tangent heading into the new millennium – exchanging the neon-stained streets of the urban jungle for the fantastical forests of the imagination – with the end result feeling less like a “new era” and more like a glimpse of “what might have been”.
Sure, they haven’t quite shaken off all the trappings of their post-…Julius Caesar sound just yet – “Hark! Hark! The Dogs DO Bark” and “Fire In The End” in particular demonstrate that there’s always going to be a few growing pains, being neither quite one thing or the other, to endure when attempting to shed your sonic skin so quickly – but it’s clear that the Ulver who have chosen to take up residence in Neverland are a band who are dreaming bigger, and in a more varied palette of shades and colours, than they have done in quite some time.
This is particularly apparent on synaesthetic stand-outs like the euphoria-inducing glitch ‘n’ gleam of “People of the Hills” and the slow-blooming electro-pulse of “Pandora’s Box” – both of which epitomise the rich texture and flavour of an album that you can almost feel on your skin – as well as the sparkling shimmer of “Welcome to the Jungle”, all serving to reinforce the new album’s focus on crafting captivating soundscapes over catchy songs, as they attempt to capture the feel of the organic through the medium of the electronic.
And while this means that it likely won’t be as instantly popular with some of their fans as much of their more recent – and more danceable – material, I’m already finding it to be a deeper, more immersive experience, one which (despite its flawed nature) ultimately rewards a more thorough, almost tactile, exploration – as well as a willingness to get a little lost within it – with layer after layer of unexpected auditory delights.
At the same time, however, I’m sure I won’t be the only one to detect a certain wistfulness underpinning the music, as if the band are already aware that – for all that Neverland offers them new opportunities to explore new and fantastical (if imperfect) vistas of sound – they can’t stay here forever… and one day they too, maybe even sooner than anyone thinks, are going to have to grow up and leave it all behind.
But, until then, there are still stories to be told, dreams to be dreamed, and mermaid games to play.