Deafheaven : Lonely People With Power
Deafheaven’s sixth record closes with “The Marvellous Orange Tree,” named so for an illusion from 19th century conjurer Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin whereby an innocuous tree springs forth fruit right before the audience’s eyes. That idea of blossoming out of little feels fitting of the journey once experienced by the San Francisco group, where every new iterative trick got pooh-poohed for treading the same ground, or being too far removed from their overnight breakout.
Besides the credit due to their debut Road to Judah, Deafheaven have never escaped the magnetism of Sunbather; its (also seemingly innocuous) sleek sleeve hid its humongous sound, which proved revitalizing for black metal’s interest and even presaged the recent shoegaze explosion. The record’s dividing fanfare and fury deemed it an instant classic when expectations, we now know, brought on something of an identity crisis to vocalist George Clarke. He describes Lonely People With People as “an assortment of ideas we’ve thrown together through the years that now feel cohesive.” That’s become quite the mixed bag since the lineup’s expansion beyond Clarke and guitarist Kerry McCoy, and gathering influences from crystalline blackened death, GY!BE post-rock or gothic indie balladry. Most recently, they decided on an intentional disregard for anyone judging their heavy impact based on Clarke’s gnashing squeals alone. Thankfully, his quote is also a true summation.
Fans of metal grit probably rejoiced when lead single “Heathen” balanced dreamy interlocked passages with a vibrant return of the banshee screams, and it serves as a microcosm for the patchwork of tied-together ideas all across the course. Infinite Granite producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen returns to turn up the volume on Clarke’s growing vocal confidence, clean and unclean, that lay buried in past displays. And while there’s no ten-minute-plus tracks here, longer centerpieces “Amethyst” and “Winona” manage to convey cinematic tales of bloodied motel rooms with real-life generational trauma across tighter runtimes, featuring measured spoken word and, in the latter’s case, a throttling injection of an introduction that barely lets up.
Like much of Deafheaven’s appeal, when the chord textures blend, the leads ring, the bass darts fluidly about and Dan Tracy’s consistent snare-driven momentum locks, loads and springs, it’s almost cosmic. Lonely People begins very much in that manner, like a main course presented well before you’ve swallowed the first interlude’s amuse-bouche: “Doberman” chugs close to New Bermuda territory, diving straight in to the crisp headrush of “Magnolia” before dynamic shifts in beautiful road-trip love song “The Garden Route” give way to the chunky mid-tempo outro to come. Hardly any songs fit one particular lane, the exception being melodic headbanger “Revelator” that sits alongside a terrifying noise interlude, and one sly feature from Interpol’s Paul Banks whose influential rhythm/lead guitar interplay feels more present in McCoy and Shiv Mehra’s sections than his own vocal inclusion.
Such left-field choices are just as alarming as the monolithic sound Meldal-Johnsen and the band have curated. Even the usually simplistic driving garage-rock of “Body Behavior” sounds warped in their hands, growing into the levels of discomfort matching its subject matter of a father misguidedly teaching his child the ways of the world. Clarke acknowledges that these lonely people can be our closest, perhaps troubled, families (“everything of you is me / every step is toward the grave / could it be flesh and blood were all we gave?” he sings in “Magnolia”), but also technologists or corporations that blight our relationships with each other and the very planet we exist on. Nowadays it seems more evident that, through such influences, harsh lessons have not been truly learned to pass better days down through generations. That’s a feeling both humbling and utterly visceral, and something Deafheaven have captured brilliantly in this album where trying to locate their own true sound and selves amongst the noise can actually end with triumph. Here’s hoping.
Label: Roadrunner
Year: 2025
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Deafheaven : Lonely People With Power
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