Music Review: Failure, The Heart Is A Monster

By Jeffery X Martin

Here’s the short version: Failure’s The Heart is a Monster is a strong contender for Album of the Year. The space-rock pioneers have come back with an incredibly strong, seamlessly cohesive record that shoots almost everything else released so far this year right out of the airlock.

That may be all some of you need to read. But it’s impossible to dumb this record down. You can’t just blurb it away; there’s too much there. Deciding not to listen to The Heart is a Monster would mean denying yourself the sheer joy of hearing one of the most exhilarating, densely packed, and luscious albums in, well, almost 20 years.

There’s a history here. Fantastic Planet was a dark, discordant journey through the themes of drug addiction and escapism, combining songs about heroin and space travel into a strange, gorgeous patchwork. Before that, the band put out the underrated magnified, a terrifying journey into madness, hallucinations and the inner darkness we all share, whether we discuss it or not.

A case can be made for calling The Heart is a Monster the third part of a trilogy. Certainly, if you listen to magnified, Fantastic Planet, and the new album in order, you get an exhausting emotional experience, traveling inward and outward until there’s nothing to do but breathe.

The Heart is a Monster brings Failure full circle. The music is still harsh, juxtaposed with the smooth intimate vocals of Ken Andrews, who always seems to be whispering terrible things into your ear in the sweetest possible way. But while most of Failure’s songs deal with instability or things being unbalanced, the new one seems to be pushing for resolution and integration.

The single “Hot Traveler,” built around a sweet string-bend riff, has Andrews singing, “My equilibrium is failing / I’m relying on your senses.” It’s the closest thing you’ll get to a cry for help from Failure, a band who lyrically tends to revel in the debris of the great fall-apart.

Is it a happy album? Hell, no. But there’s a ray of light here, although the tunnel seems longer than ever. The standout here is “A.M. Amnesia,” a song that soars and dives like a seagull on the hunt, everything moving in quarter steps and echoes. “The space falls in / The space falls out,” sings Andrews, and you feel it in the pit of your stomach.

Failure never sounded like any other band out there. In the time they’ve been gone, their legend has grown like a cousin you haven’t seen for years. They’ve picked up right where they left off with The Heart is a Monster, and there is still not another band out there that can approach their sound. Failure sounds like Failure, and no one else.

This album is a tortured joy, revealing new secrets with each play, leaving the listener always on the edge of a breakthrough. You don’t often get records like this, and as such, this one is to be savored. The band may be called Failure, but The Heart is a Monster, by itself or as part of a continuing body of work, is an absolute success.

The Heart Is A Monster will be released by Ingrooves Music Group on June 30.