BLACK DRESSES

2021 NOISE-POP/INDUSTRIAL-POP

Forever In Your Heart is the fifth album from the noise-pop not band Black Dresses. This is their follow up to 2020s Peaceful as Hell, one of the best if not thee best albums from that year. I, as with everyone else, was disappointed when shortly after its release the duo spontaneously combusted, breaking up and removing their music from nearly all listening platforms. Then several months later they drop Forever In Your Heart along with this completely confusing explanation, “We’re no longer a band unfortunately. Regardless, we’ve decided to keep putting out music.”. So is this all recorded before or after the split, and will there be more material to come? No clue but I’ll take it. Together the duo make noise-pop with an emphasis on noise. It’s a brutal ballad of electronics paired with vocals ranging from spoken words to screams, but there’s a lot more character to them than that.

They are charmingly amateurish, like fast thoughts scrawled into a diary, sometimes they are awkwardly disjointed, others scathing in the moment anger, but always honest. They will stutter and pause as if still searching for their next word, or pepper in a nervous chuckle but it’s never cringe worthy. There’s plenty of well-rehearsed material to break it up but the group’s off the cuff personability is their signature; they feel like regular people with issues and insecurities. The way they vent is just a little more intense than most and as a forewarning the contents deal with being trans and dysphoria, listen at your own discretion. The difference between Peaceful as Hell and Forever In Your Heart is attitude. Where the former has the disillusioned duo finding positivity and hope in a shitty world, the latter is its antithesis, dissociation amongst the desolation, it doesn’t feel like they have lost hope, it’s that it never existed in the first place and the fact they thought it might seems quaint now.

This isn’t just a lyrical thing either, the production goes from a much brighter and poppier tone to dark and industrial. Not to misrepresent Peaceful because it’s still nasty but Forever is a step more wretched, at times you may feel uncomfortable, that’s just the reality Black Dresses live in. Then there is the question of the quality of Forever In Your Heart and it’s good, it doesn’t produce the kind of adulation that Peaceful as Hell does but that’s fine, I’ll gladly recommend good. Even the music itself can’t escape from their prior work with the opener Peacesign, a reference to its album cover and much more. They take a quick look back at its now tired themes and dash them spectacularly. 

The dead hope that you always clung to
The dream that someday it would heal you
Is there anywhere left to fall?
I try so hard to recall hope

The instrumentation is just as heavy with a crushing riff and buzzsaw of electronics obliterating the ruined remains of naivety. Alienated rage is a good term for everything happening here, including Concrete Bubble, a tornado of industrial fury. Metal beams clang together while they let loose their most visceral screams yet. The duo laments on the mental anguish of isolation, a recurring subject of their music, but hey now everyone is isolated, sounds like an average day to them. A droning nocturnal tide rolls in for Bulldozer. It groans and pulsates with harsh effects like a broken machine kept working by unknown forces. I can picture this track being the breaking point for many with its sudden shots of abrasion and its titular repetition; I won’t spoil it, just know that it’s great.

Heaven is a funny name for a song in this deluge of misery. Lyrics of dissociation contrast surprising bright synths, of course they are surrounded by the bloodthirsty crowd that is the rest of the production. Their comforting twinkle joins in with a brief message of goodness that honestly feels flippant at this point. I’m not with Tiny Ball, its three short ideas crammed into two minutes. Starting with outsider music style lo-fi into obnoxious squeaking MIDIs; it loses me fast but at least it ends fast. Their intentional sloppiness is taken too far on Silver Bells. Unpleasant missed notes, various annoying interruptions, and a terrible skit, it’s too much which is a shame as the instrumental grinds your bones to dust in the best way.

This string of lows continues on both Ragequitted and Waiting42moro. They are similar, suffering from slow and unmemorable compositions. Topically it’s what you expect from the duo minus the biting charm. I know they can do this less aggressive style justice and they proceed to do exactly that on Gone In An Instant. The cleans to screams hit in the right spot, building further on their frustrated despondence in an atmosphere of deep guitar notes. Looking forward to the title of We’ll Figure It Out I think maybe at ten tracks in this is the turning point for our characters. To come out of their slump and regain a piece of optimistic idealism. Yeah no, its a fuck you to the phrase and the idea of relying on the misguided notion that you will just “figure it out”, like its that easy. 

I’m drowning and I’m floating
I’m dreaming and I’m hopeless
I don’t give a shit if it doesn’t work
I done a lot of things and none of them worked

Sonically it’s a, dare I say, dancey trance. Crying in the club has never felt so cathartic. We go from a converted factory to an actual one with dystopian oppressiveness that pounds you into the ground. It’s called Understanding, about the need to be understood and about people’s lack of it. Life is confusing but the sick production is not, equally bleak in both silence and hellish reverberations. Perfect Teeth is my favorite of the listing. The fact that it is as distorted as possible has something to do with it. It wields its wrath like a sledgehammer, taking errant swings in all directions. Not that it matters when you are surrounded by enemies. The lyrics take particular aim at assholes who call the band edgy.

Perfect teeth, perfect teeth
Fucking chewing on me

It has the kind of lines that stick with you. You are going about your day until your brain interrupts you thinking back to it, “fuck man that was crazy”. Zero Ultra opens like an 80s sci-fi escape sequence, anxiety building as you run down the gun metal gray hallways. It’s mixed till fully incorporated with a hefty spoonful of cacophony. Whispers fly over a minimal 8-bit landscape on Mistake. It’s an intro to the outro, a lead up to Can’t Keep It Together. The essence of a closer, patient with sorrow unlike the previous songs. Tired they pick up their bags and get ready to move forward in a senseless and cruel world. I adore the schmaltzy but jacked up guitar solo right before its finish ; on the surface it sounds so wrong and yet it is perfect. As a whole it’s like the Black Dresses version of staring into a moonlit sky in tearful contemplation, a little corny but they make it their own.

Forever In Your Heart is the Black Dresses gold standard, poignant and discordant, barn burners to get you through another day on this dried husk of a planet. I only hope that they keep doing it, no matter what the depression glorifiers say making art under constant turmoil isn’t easy. But for the sake of the folks who really love their music, who’s connection spans further than surface level enjoyment, the duo’s continued creativity puts blood in their veins. Even if you aren’t one of those people, this record is pretty damn good.

7/10

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