Water Gun Water Gun Sky Attack – Gay Joke

Water Gun Water Gun Sky Attack, led by Tim de Reuse, is an incredibly refreshing solo act from Montreal, Québec. His latest work focuses less on krautrock, and instead opts for a more streamlined blend of IDM and post-punk. While not as prolific as the amazing I Don't Know What You're Worried About, Gay Joke does an admirable job at extending Reuse’s catalogue, while also offering some of his best ideas.

At the top of the list are songs such as Flex!, which contains some of Reuse’s best vocals and instrumentation. Oh, Get Foreshortened, Man, Get Normal is a true standout, with its climatic percussive elements balanced by impeccable, dreamy walls of sounds. The closing, swirling hails of dissonant electronica ranks among Reuse’s best works. I Do Not Light Up boasts an impressive vocal performance, a tight instrumentation and incredibly admirable progression; one of Reuse’s best works. They’re poppy, but I'm a Sucker for Lost Civilization and Smut are more proof the second half of Gay Joke is far superior to the first, due to the artist’s subtle yet charming blend of harmonics and creative progressions. 1,000,000,000,000 Angels Tell Another Joke completely steals the show and ends the album well with its tremendous, frenzied guitars and harrowing outro sequence.

Sadly, much of the album is quite flat in comparison. NIL (Sour Death) opens the album with neat synthetics, but a poor pop formula. The accompanying instrumentation on Domestic Song is impeccably mixed and perfectly balanced, but the composition is far too ordely and plainly boring. Leon's Turning Monstrous methodically plots along like it’s simply going through the motions. There’s more gorgeous textural work on the title track, Gay Joke, but once again the plain composition drags the experience down, much the same way Reuse’ lame vocoder drags down I Wring You Out in the Sink’s otherwise genuinely absorbing soundscape. Gone is the exuberating energy present throughout Glow City and I Don't Know What You're Worried About; in contrast, these tracks are uninteresting and sterile

Reuse has made the same mistake on Gay Joke as many great singer-songwriters before him; the composer has placed too much of an emphasis on the lyricism and the “meaning” behind his music, and sometimes the music itself feels like an afterthought. It’s the same pitfall Nick Cave has fallen into in recent years. Furthermore, the album is the equivalent of Vincent van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters (1885); while it contains some of the brilliant elements of Gogh’s more notable works, the work itself is imbalanced, and at times unrecognisable compared to the greater canon of the artist’s work. Yet at its peak, Gay Joke contains some of Reuse’s best ideas, and a commendable amount of energy to suite. His textural work is some of the best of his career, it’s only the vocals in contrast that seem tired and bored. Worth a listen, nonetheless.

Good

Listen to it here:

https://watergunsky.bandcamp.com/album/gay-joke