Since their inception in 2016, New York’s Witnesses have been a fluid entity. A constantly shifting lineup, held together by sole permanent member and mastermind Greg Schwan, where a small collection of artists lend their voices and instrumental talents to the equally shifting sounds of each album—ambient, post-metal, and doom. Joy sees Witnesses—this time as a trio, with Simon Bibby (of Thy Listless Heart) providing vocals, and Angel Hernandez percussion—turn to doom. And doom is the purported heart of Witnesses, as they claim to take primary inspiration from the British early Peaceville era of the sound. But if their past is any indicator, it would be unwise to put Witnesses in a box, because Joy leans as heavily into prog and post as it does into anything else.
Joy is comprised of five songs (plus the short “Interlude”) mysteriously described as “deeply contradictory compositions about self-actualization.” Each named “Joy,” but with a different subtitle,1 they could effectively be seen as different interpretations of the titular emotion. Joy does not sound, in general, particularly joyful, but it is not gloomy and despairing like you might expect. It is variously introspective (“Like a River”), triumphant (“I See Everything”), and dramatic (“Safety in Me”) with a blunt, clean kind of openness to the compositions, hiding nothing, transitioning crisply, but not without grace. To my ears, the likeness that strikes most strongly is to Wilderun, albeit a more pared-down version, as Bibby’s croons launch themselves upwards alongside major-modulated blackened swooshes, pounding fills, and subtle flourishes of violin. At other times, however, the doom footprint stamps itself firmly before you in the string-accented, sweetly sad sways (“Like a River”), the drooping chords pulled out in downtempo dips (“The Endings”), and the very My Dying Bride-esque spoken word (“Beyond the Sound of My Voice”). These threads combine to form a unique concoction of bare emotions and increasingly ephemeral through-lines, harder to grasp than let slip by.
Two main attributes form Joy’s strength and downfall: raw emotionality and dynamism. The first is largely down to Bibby’s vocal performance, which is at turns wistfully melancholic (“Like a River”), and commanding (“I See Everything,” “Safety in Me”). But instrumentation also plays a significant role, in doomy weepiness (“Like a River,”), or more post-metal mournful meanderings (“I See Everything,” “Interlude”). The second is gained through the aggressive progressiveness of Witnesses’ compositional style, and the impeccable percussion of Angel Hernandez. Where the former is overt—the music moving relentlessly between assertive bombast and ethereal gentleness—the latter is insidiously omnipresent; electric with shifting energies. Yet, while the force of feeling can be resonant, it frequently approaches the abrasive as the cleans are so forceful as to nearly be shouted (“I See Everything,” “Safety in Me”), or dwells in the dreaded major key. These tendencies are made unpleasant not because intense cleans and major keys are bad in themselves,2 but because they are paired with an overly gymnastic approach to songwriting, where Witnesses leaps jarringly from one mood to another, tarring the brilliance of individual passages. The most blatant example, “The Endings,” transitions through silence between styles so disparate that it wasn’t until I began more active listening that I realized this wasn’t a new song. Equally discombobulating is the sudden pathos at the endings of “I See Everything,” and “Safety in Me,” where a short passage of gentle, mournful melody and singing comes abruptly from nowhere. But this proclivity is ubiquitous and ruins many genuine moments of beauty and poignancy. The group yanks bouncy exuberance out of plaintiveness; juxtaposing half-major, half-dissonant riffs with pared-back post-metal. They repeatedly lurch from a harmonizing serenade into uncomfortably flat intonation.
It is thus the two subtler elements of Joy’s feeling and flexibility that are to be praised: those beautiful melodic moments, and the brilliant drumming. The opening track “Like a River,” arguably presents the best of the former, and is arguably the best track on the album. When it comes to percussion, it is the many, elastic fills, tumbling rollovers, and vibrant use of cymbals that provide the majority of the album’s true feeling. The drums greatly benefitted from a production that puts them right near the front of the mix but tends to relegate the guitars to a background role, draining their potency and leaving little to distract listeners in the moments when the singing—also front and center—dominates the sound palate, overly zealous.
Witnesses lives up to their name; their music feels like the stories of varied voices, potent, but unharmonised. The gorgeous, deceptive simplicity of “Like a River” gives way to a record too emotionally and tonally scattershot to stick, and it’s an immense disappointment. Those with a high tolerance for whimsical, uneven prog may find much to appreciate, but for the rest of us, there’s not an overabundance of Joy to be had.
Rating: Disappointing
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Self-Released
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: November 8th, 2024
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