I am a fairly passionate Charlemagne Palestine fan, but it must be noted that my love is a very complicated and highly conditional one. I tend to enjoy his music in spite of his eccentricities rather than because of them (they can be quite grating at times).  Consequently, I went into this album with no small amount of trepidation, as there were three red flags right off the bat: 1.) a ridiculous title, 2.) something resembling the word "sing," and 3.) a record label that I was completely unfamiliar with in Idiosyncratics.  Also, the nasal a cappella opening seemed to instantly confirm those misgivings.  Consequently, I was absolutely knocked sideways when Ssingggg then unexpectedly blossomed into an apocalyptic monster of a crescendo.  At the risk of sounding crazy, I believe this easily rivals all of Palestine's previous career highlights.  Also, as far as I am concerned, this is a strong (albeit dangerously early) Album of the Year contender.  I am confident that history will vindicate me.
There truly has never been anyone else quite like Charlemagne Palestine and there presumably never will be, as I consistently find myself unable to comprehend his various artistic decisions or guess where any of his pieces are ultimately headed.  Each new album is a fresh surprise.  Ssingggg is a prime example of that singularly unpredictable, enigmatic, and somewhat self-sabotaging nature, as it opens with little more than the hum from a rubbed glass and some high-pitched quasi-ritualistic drone-singing.  Gradually, a massive, buzzing, and complexly dissonant organ chord swells into the picture, forming the perfect backdrop for Palestine's ominous and maniacal anti-mass…until his wordless chants begin to cohere into the word "sing" and–later–the phrase "I love to sing," thus dissipating the mysterious, haunting spell and making me briefly grimace with exasperation.  It is almost like he suddenly thought "Oh dear, this is getting much too great, much too soon.  I need to do something conspicuously silly fast."  Of course, an alternate possibility is that Palestine was trying to make some sort of commentary on the shifting meaningfulness/meaninglessness of language.  Or that (more likely) he was just guilelessly, earnestly, and totally unselfconsciously absorbed in his music.  Regardless of the intent, it was a curiously wrong-footing and distracting move.
Of course, the flipside of Palestine's prickly oddity is his outsider brilliance, which deceptively manifests itself through the massing, swelling, and complexly harmonizing organ drone that continues to grow even as the melodic foreground takes its strange turns.  Essentially, Charlemagne is a master magician engaged in a prolonged bit of artful misdirection, distracting me with parlor tricks (and possibly a kazoo) while the skies darken unnoticed in preparation for the storm to end all storms.  That threatened storm finally hits around the 20-minute mark and can only be described as all hell breaking loose (in the best way possible).  While the organ continues to drone on, Palestine unleashes a truly epic tape onslaught, as martial drums, sheep, choirs, political rallies, squealing children, the entire population of a rainforest, and an actual massive thunderstorm all bleed together into a buzzing, crushing maelstrom that sounds like the entire history of the world condensed into one brilliantly hallucinatory, brain-melting cacophony.  Then, after about half an hour of sustained phantasmagoric perfection, it all suddenly vanishes into silence, leaving only the lonely hum of a wet finger circling around a glass.  That is where I would expect the piece to logically end, of course, but instead it blossoms into a surreal coda involving a singing toy performing a duet with Charlemagne, which concludes with both the toy and the artist saying "bye bye."  The resulting sensation is probably not unlike staggering out of a war zone and suddenly finding oneself on the set of The Muppet Show.
Experienced on headphones, Ssingggg is a legitimately visceral, harrowing, maximalist, and synapse-frying experience; the sort of thing that qualifies more as a life event than entertainment.  I truly cannot say enough great things about how wild, ambitious, bewildering, and masterfully executed this album is. Ssingggg is Charlemagne Palestine's "mic drop" moment: this vein is done; there is no reason for him or anyone else to ever attempt something like this ever again, as it is unquestionably the last word in whatever the hell it is.  If life were a movie, Palestine would be on a boat somewhere right now, content that he has conclusively realized his destiny and never needs to make another album ever again.  Since it is not, however, I am sure he will resurface with something completely different in like a month (and I will presumably be surprised again).
 
Read More
