Pitchfork reviews Tomahawk's new album 'Oddfellows'

Still, being as preternaturally disposed to weirdness as these guys are, Oddfellows all but refuses to take the path of least resistance. For every forward-marching “Oddfellows”, there’s an unholy jazz-grunge-“Cop Killer” mutant like “Rise Up Dirty Waters”, or an open-ended creeper like “Baby Let’s Play ____”, swelling like the score to a dusty horror flick. By and large, these songs rarely end up anywhere near where they started, or where you’d expect them to. For a listener, this has kind of a decentering effect; with all the moving parts— and especially with Patton slinking around in the corners, looking for a good place to scream— you could play Oddfellows a couple dozen times and still not feel like you’d caught everything it throws at you. But keeping things a little uncomfortable is certainly the goal here; these songs have this kind of festering, acid-stomach chemistry to them, weird and unsettling even when they’re not particularly trying to be. And even the more straightforward stuff here get a little grislier once Patton comes along: he speaks of faces in pillows, makes a request for rope. Oddfellows leaves you constantly on edge, bludgeoned with riffs, gleefully dreading another of Patton’s not-so-sweet-nothings, waiting for these songs to jerk you into another time signature or maybe another genre altogether.

“I didn’t think I could lose faith in humanity any more than I already had, but after witnessing some things, it feels like the world is a dystopia where victims don’t get justice and corruption prevails. I’m one step away from being a vigilante to protect people and bring justice to the people I love. I’ve thought about it.” - Alice Glass; via Crystal Castles Announce New Album, (III)
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“I didn’t think I could lose faith in humanity any more than I already had, but after witnessing some things, it feels like the world is a dystopia where victims don’t get justice and corruption prevails. I’m one step away from being a vigilante to protect people and bring justice to the people I love. I’ve thought about it.” - Alice Glass; via Crystal Castles Announce New Album, (III)

Source: pitchfork.com

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