Some overdue notes on Acolous

gettin estranged

I’m not sure I believed Acolous by Such A Pretty Face was ever actually going to be finished. I don’t want that to sound like an insult. It’s just been an obscene undertaking that I was looking in on the process of for two and a half years, and it was already in the making well before that. We used to joke that Points of Failure, a collaboration between many of the same musicians that started recording after the first proposed release for Acolous, was going to come out first. Then it actually did.

But when you hear the album you’ll get it. It sounds labored over. It sounds expensive. More than anything, it sounds overwhelming. I interviewed Jarhead, the singer and songwriter for most of the album, for a class project two years ago, and I asked them what Acolous meant. It’s an archaic term for limbless and sure it sounds *kinda cool,* but actually why? They told me they thought of helplessness, a limbless knight being trampled over. It was an off the cuff thought, so don’t take it as a significant statement on the album, but it stuck with me.

Helplessness…

Powerlessness…

I first was sent an early version of “Fools Gold” so that I could be the last-minute guitar sub in a performance class that Jarhead was taking. I remember walking to my dorm from the library hearing it for the first time, grinning from how cool it sounded. Jarhead and I had been friends for a little while, but I had never heard their music like this. I still think it’s the strongest song on the project, it really blows me away every time I hear it. Because I got the opportunity to perform it, it’s the only song where I feel my guitar contribution offers anything to the composition, otherwise I’m just a texture among what must be dozens.

Jarhead played me the whole thing for the first time a few months later. It was obviously only partially recorded but fully sequenced. Honestly, I didn’t really get it at the time. He sent me a partially mixed version of the whole album before I tracked guitar, and I started listening to it more. It was still in a very rough phase at the time, a wash of sounds to the point I could barely hear the difference after my guitar was added. I listened to “Fools Gold” a lot, as it was the song I knew best and remains the most easily accessible track in my opinion. I also quite liked “Faint” for how unsettling and aggressive it was. But there was a particular stretch in the middle of the album that really stuck with me, tracks 4-6.

It’s a devastating trio, really. First “Seal the Deal” with that longing guitar intro, leading into the first verse “I’m getting estranged from my face, from my name,” which hit me so hard when I first really listened to it. The track becomes this beautifully melancholic wash, building up into a swell of yearning and dissolving back down into resignation. “Lie, Lie, Lie.”

“Your Smile” opens with much more disquieting guitar figures. It’s almost a blues, but every part seems to cut off short or extend uncomfortably long. “Look in the mirror and tell me what you see” sounds like a daunting task, even a threat, as the strings and vocals seem to turn sour, anxiously engulfing the guitar. And it’s all tied together by the beautiful saxophone solo that defines the track.

“Mal de Débarquement” is a proper slammer and my favorite song to perform off the record. Maybe I’m biased as I get to rip a stupid shred solo at the end, which to my great shame will never stop being incredibly fun for me. But even without that outro, the song is a moment of urgency in a record that’s often more meandering.

“Mal de Débarquement,” along with “Run” and “Chicken Garbage” also represent a cool crossover moment for me, with bass contributions from my long time friend and Papa Squat & the Magic Treehouse bandmate Jack RL. His slap line adds so much groove to the dark wave-adjacent “Run,” in particular.

Listening to the unmixed record back in 2022, I usually turned it off around “Flood.” Certainly the name implies this song should be a lot to take, but it always felt like a mess to me. It took listening to the final mixes for me to really get this track. It feels so much lighter now, and I can appreciate the details in the synths and strings as it builds into a Pink Floyd-esque jam. The organ goes hard too.

Closer “Wake Up Sleepyhead” was not an early favorite of mine either, but I grew to like it in the summer of 2023, when I showed up to a couple sessions to make noise and scream over the midsection. It sounds like folk music played on the moon, with the tense emptiness of the opening. The whole arrangement seems to collapse in on itself at the halfway point, and the arpeggiated synth, despite its machine timing, fails entirely to keep the pulse. As the different instruments close in, the song seems to be gasping for breath. It’s all so much, then suddenly it’s over. We’re left with the same banjo and synth we started with, but it somehow feels even more desolate. The desperate plea of the midsection ultimately snuffed out, and what little is left ultimately flickers out and shuts off.

Helpless…

limbless…

It’s odd to write about your close friends’ work, especially when you know they’ll read it. I’ve heard the record so many times across a long and constantly changing period of my life and I’m not entirely sure what to make of it any more, if I ever was. On the one hand it’s a grand statement of despair, but we’ve also memed significant parts into the ground to in a last ditch attempt to keep any interest in the material. After I send this letter I probably won’t listen to it again for a long time. We’re all tired of the record, none of us more than Jarhead and Clifton. But I’m incredibly proud of them and happy I got to be a small part of the project.

Listen to it if you haven’t on Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, or wherever. We’re playing a very cool bill at Bowery Electric this Friday March 28th, and it’ll likely be the last time we do a set consisting largely of Acolous material. We’re doing a few new songs too, and we’re hoping to keep working on a second record as a group. Get your tickets here, I’d love to see you there!

Thanks for reading!!

Anna