On
Exploded View's self-titled debut, the band's stream-of-consciousness post-punk drew a significant part of its impact from its live recording process, which emphasized the album's dreamlike flow and surprising tangents. The band -- now the trio of Annika Henderson, Hugo Quezada, and Martin Thulin -- brings a little more order to the proceedings on
Obey. The trio tracked the album in a more traditional fashion at Thulin and Quezada's Mexico City studio, but fortunately, the more controlled environment doesn't diminish
Exploded View's evocative power at all. If anything,
Obey draws listeners into their lucid dreams more completely as they explore the costs of conformity and resisting it. The band reframes its surreal racket as an expression of the struggle to escape traditions that are actually vicious cycles: "Rant"'s smothering electronics and tireless beat evoke an out-of-control assembly line, and though the darkly funky "Raven Raven"'s descending keyboard hook and dubby beats come close to
Exploded View's offhanded cool, it casts an ominous shadow that's hard to shake. As striking as
Obey's more abstract songs are -- the title track reaches mystical heights as Henderson croons and whispers over a dense fog of synths and drums as big as cauldrons -- the album's most direct songs are among its finest. As a member of
Exploded View, Henderson has become a less detached presence than she was as a solo artist, and the ghostly hints of empathy that lurked around the band's debut float to
Obey's surface. On strangely elegant and empowering songs such as "Gone Tomorrow"'s gentle nudge to seize the moment and the tender psych-folk ballad "Letting Go of Childhood Dreams," Henderson and company rival
Broadcast,
Stereolab, and
Virginia Wing's mastery of airy, philosophical pop. Elsewhere, she combines the personal and political in her songwriting more naturally and compellingly than ever before. "You showed him once and you showed him twice/That some things can't be undone," Henderson sings on "Open Road" as a bubbling synth and mournful acoustic strumming seem to push the song's protagonist closer to her destination -- or at least farther away from her troubles. On "Dark Stains," she's sympathetic, if not exactly forgiving, as she watches someone close to her fight to change, and the way the track's momentum snowballs each time she repeats the mantra-like chorus "but I believe you" makes for the album's most life-affirming moment. At once more deliberate and more liberated than their debut, with
Obey Exploded View challenge their listeners to be as free as as their music sounds. ~ Heather Phares