by Jason Lymangrover
It’s only appropriate that Lullabye Arkestra would sign to Vice Records, to be bookshelved alongside a wide-spanning roster of artists with big personalities (including the Streets, Black Lips, Justice, Chromeo, and King Khan & His Shrines). Like all the aforementioned musicians, Lullabye Arkestra have their own thing going on, and with originality to spare, the rollicking Toronto duo is pretty hard to peg down to just one genre. For Threats/Worship, newlyweds Kat Taylor-Small and Justin Small have one unified foot firmly rooted in hardcore, while the other one hokey-pokeys around from sturdy Dead Moon-like garage rock to Sabbathy sludge metal to Kills-styled indie rock and over to shoegaze dreamscapes. Just when you think you have a song like “Surviving the Year of the Wolves” pegged, it changes gears completely from a blistering “Screaming at the Wall” punk thrasher to a beautiful orchestral interlude, and then, before you can blink, it switches again to a Goblin Cock-ish stoner rock groove. It’s fitting that the Smalls lent their voices to a recording session with Fucked Up, one of the few other hardcore bands able to meld such a wide variety of other styles without losing sight of the classic punk spirit. However, interestingly enough, jumping genre trains from hardcore and back doesn’t seem to be a high priority on this album. It just comes naturally now. On Ampgrave (a two-year labor of love), they laid it on thickly with violins, horns, and organs, but here the fuzz bass, crispy drum crunch, and screaming vocals drive the ship for most of the ride, except for detailed key moments when keyboards are added to crescendos to make them that much more epic. “Storm” and “Floating Graveyard” utilize this technique splendidly. Meanwhile, “Voodoo” blasts by in a 44-second frenzy, with a focus on the heavy, and “We Fuck the Night” is as fun and raunchy as it sounds. It’s a way more live-sounding record than the last, filled with raw power and endless spirit. In fact, Motown soul doesn’t even factor into the equation at all, like it did on their Constellation debut. Rock is king here, and despite being a drastic stylistic departure from their last album, it’s no less solid.