This collaboration could not possibly have come at a better time, as Sam Shackleton has been riding quite a varied and adventurous hot streak over the last few years with his collaborations with Holy Tongue, Scotch Rolex, Waclaw Zimpel, and Siddhartha Belmannu. Given that Ben Chasney is also quite a creatively restless artist, Jinxed By Being could have gone in any number of possible directions, but the direction that the duo ultimately landed on sounds a hell of a lot like a Six Organs of Admittance album. The twist, however, is that it sounds like a truly great Six Organs album that I have been waiting for my whole life, as Chasney's signature psychedelic folk vision blossoms into vivid psychotropic color with the addition of Shackleton's panning and swirling electronic mindfuckery. Chasney and Shackleton have truly hit upon a magic formula here: usually a Six Organs album lives or dies based on the strength of Chasney's songwriting or the quantity of killer guitar motifs, but Shackleton's "heavy cosmic dread" aesthetic makes every song feel like I am being lured deeper and deeper into a phantasmagoric dreamscape.
The opening "The Voice and the Pulse" is currently one of the leading contenders for my favorite piece on the album, but it is more of a shapeshifting mind-melter than a structured song. While I am not usually a fan of Chasney's falsetto vocals, the hushed, repeating refrain of "keep the corpse alive" makes the piece feel like a morbid nursery rhyme leading me into a reality-dissolving psychedelic fog that is as outre as anything by Current 93 or Legendary Pink Dots. Like most of the pieces on the album, the best parts tend to be the hallucinatory swirl of sounds in the periphery rather than the song itself, but the tribal-ambient percussion flourishes and the vibraphone-sounding melody that surface throughout the piece are sublime pleasures as well. The album's next stunner follows soon after with "The Grip of the Flesh," as Chasney's chant-like vocals guide me into a shapeshifting phantasmagoria of kalimba melodies, layered field recordings, and gorgeously shivering chord strums. Then the bottom drops out and the piece unexpectedly transforms into a more pounding and doom-inspired second act that favorably calls to mind Chasney's erstwhile labelmates Om (albeit only if Al Cisneros swapped out his bass for a formidable arsenal of electronics and effects pedals). More importantly, "The Grip of the Flesh" kicks off an unbroken run of killer pieces that stretches all the way to the end of the album.
The weakest link of that run of hits is probably "Stages of Capitulation," which calls to mind an alternate universe Black Sabbath in which their primary influence was The Incredible String Band. To my ears, it never fully catches fire, but it nicely illustrates an important aspect of Jinxed By Being: every single piece features at least one wonderfully inspired passage at its heart. In the case of "Stages of Capitulation," that passage takes the form of dueling guitar solos over a cool bass vamp, but most of the other pieces are more analogous to a celestial event: I start off thinking that I am destined to merely enjoy a solid Six Organs song, but then it is suddenly eclipsed by a psychedelic storm that dramatically transforms everything into an immersive, vividly realized mindfuck. That said, "The Sign of the Dove" also mostly falls on the more modest end of the transformation spectrum, as its chant-like desert rock delirium is enhanced by dub-inspired snares and shimmering chord swells before ultimately getting sucked into a roiling black hole of sizzling distortion.
The slow-burning and chant-like "Electrical Storm" is yet another hot contender for the strongest piece on the album, as it locks into a hypnotic gamelan-inspired percussion groove that gradually becomes consumed by rippling, panning, and darkly sizzling psychotropic magic (along with a very cool murmuring vocal loop). Remarkably, it somehow gets even better in its final minutes, as Chasney unveils an intricate guitar pattern as Shackleton goes completely bananas with his production flourishes for a crescendo that sounds like a descent into a psychotropic exotica cave. The closing "Spring Will Return ／ Oliver's Letter" is yet another gamelan-inspired instant classic, as a killer dual-guitar hook winds its way through a shifting landscape of plinking piano, ghostly vibes, backwards guitars, and lysergically panning vocal afterimages.
I feel slightly crazy for saying this, but I genuinely think this might be my favorite Six Organs of Admittance album. My hesitation stems from the fact that Jinxed By Being is a bit of a bizarre outlier, as the reasons for its greatness lie outside the usual reasons that I enjoy Ben Chasney's work (the occasional beautifully written song, the intricate acoustic guitar motifs, the fiery electric guitar shredding, etc.). Notably, my caveat with the other Six Organs album released this year (Time Is Glass) was that the songs were strong, but the no-frills, stripped-down nature of those recordings did not fully do them justice. On Jinxed By Being, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, as this is a collection of solid songs that have been transformed into something absolutely mesmerizing by their visionary arrangements and bold production flourishes. Sam Shackleton could not possibly be a more perfect foil for Chasney's vision. I'm calling it now: Jinxed By Being is the headphone album of the year.
