Today, A Beacon School – also known as the experimental dream pop project of Brooklyn-based multi instrumentalist Patrick J Smith – shares his sophomore album yoyo. It is the highly anticipated follow-up to Smith’s brilliant debut LP Cola, which was an album that never stayed still, in the best way; alternating between synthwave and glitch pop, math rock and shoegaze, Smith’s tonal narratives are sprawling, atmospheric stunners that seem to transcend dimension, gesturing towards a potentially irrevocable catharsis along the way. Described as “an untainted exploration of the unconscious artistic self and the oscillation of time,” yoyo is the first full length release from Smith in nearly five years, and is the perfect addition to Smith’s already expansive repertoire.
It’s best, I think, to begin with the stunning closer “Mantra,” given Smith’s explanation of it, which I present verbatim:
Mantra is the last song on the album, and it states plainly everything I’ve been trying to get across on the rest of the album (and probably in every song I’ve ever written). The main phrase that repeats through the song was something I just blurted out for the demo and planned to eventually change. I was embarrassed at how blunt the words are, but thankfully (ABS bass player) Chase convinced me to keep them the way they are. We agreed there’s power in stating what you feel directly, in this case: “Everything I don’t want to change is changing, Everyone I don’t want to leave is leaving, Everything I want to change is staying the same, Everyone that I want to stay is leaving.”
“Mantra” loads in slowly as if beginning in media res, already somewhere between halfway and the end of a particularly substantial cycle of introspection and inquiry. “Can you name all the places you were racing?,” Smith asks, as if in a haze; “can you tell just by the light which way you’re facing?” Speaking towards Smith’s intention of capturing oscillation between space and time, later the narrative inverts along with a discernible shift in the instrumentals, where Smith laments how, actually, nothing is changing at the speed in which he desires. But soon, as indicated in the growing mass of guitar and bass, little matters apart from simply going with the flow of the universe: “just let it wash away,” Smith commands, and the wall of sound that has been building begins to melt downwards.
This gentle bluntness, ultimately bleeding into an unapologetic vulnerability and resignation towards fate, is, simply, the perfect catalyst for yoyo. This perpetual desire for constant self-awareness and the propensity towards careful action is echoed within other expansive tracks, like in the cinematic “Dot” and “KITM,” short for “Keep It To Myself.” Though within the latter track lies the latent fear of being too exposed, too “known,” the synth bursts open at the bridge offering wisdom-after-the-fact, with a sagely voice explaining “you’ve got it all wrong/it’s been there all along.” The chorus returns, but the meaning has been altered slightly; rather than express these frustrations with lament, they are now delivered with conviction, and the entire phrase that once referred to bashful hesitation and the obscuring of personhood has been shortened to an acronym, and thus, stripped of its power.
Quite a few moments on the album point confidently towards acceptance of the unknown, like in our two favorite tracks “Potion” and opener “Middle of Winter.” “Potion,” written in one sitting, is built on a bubbly, effervescent, yet ultimately unpredictable melody that directly encapsulates its inspiration. Here, the burst of excitement is about a recent infatuation, and the oscillation between affectual extremes. “Console me / New love is lonely,” Smith admits alongside both gritty and lithe guitars. Soon, however, the tone begins to change: “so console me/ new love is holy,” Smith revises, a newfound hope nestled safely within the noise.“Middle of Winter,” which contains some of the most beautifully melancholic synth work in the album, hints at surrender and breathless devotion. “Can’t change the constraints/ burned-in dream of you,” Smith explains before admitting that “a simple thing could be so much better” should they “walk into the murk together.” The guitar and synth that responds to this line flows clear, cool, and smooth like water, the tonal equivalent of a perpetual sigh of relief.
yoyo is truly an apt title for this album due to the way these tracks sway delicately back and forth from hesitation to acquiescence, from the way in which the synth work – complex, meticulous, breathtaking – rise and fall, swell and shrink, bloom and wilt all in tandem with Smith’s earnest, vulnerable narratives. And yet, the album also seems to hint towards something like equilibrium – not because everything in life has magically become simpler, but because there now exists an internal peace that came from a resignation to fate, as well as trust that this was what was meant to happen in the first place. Smith encapsulates this in the final lines of “Mantra:” “all along, right in front of me / all this time, perfect symmetry.”
yoyo is out now via Grind Select. Buy it here.
P
photo courtesy of artist
kid with a vinyl 