We live in an age of multitudes. Our emotions today tilt from joy to horror to humour with the flick of a doom-scrolling finger. Likewise, the art of this era has started to reflect this boundaryless mania. See the multiverse trope in cinema and pop music’s embrace of darker themes and avant-garde producers. Recent cultural history could even be viewed as an arms race of increased emotional complexity; from modernist sincerity to postmodern scepticism to contemporary multiplicities.
These sorts of oscillating moods are something Clothesline From Hell (the solo project of Toronto multi-instrumentalist Adam LaFramboise) utilises with intuitive aplomb. The accessible but gently complex music he comes up with on his debut album ‘Slather On The Honey’ is simultaneously relaxed yet anxious, welcome yet sinister and honest yet guarded. His moniker reflects this. Taken from a brutal wrestling move, it gives no hints at all to the nuanced moods contained within.
The album’s signature palette sees LaFramboise’s distinct soft, back-of-the-throat vocals sit atop complex layers of drum machine rhythms and gentle acoustic guitars, which often lie somewhere between folk and math rock. Impressively, however, the resulting concoction often sounds very different to these individual descriptors. LaFramboise does an impressive job of turning these ingredients into something that both resembles his distinct recipe, yet also bursts with unexpected flavours.
In his more laidback moments, these eight tracks tilt between psych-rock effervescence, emo expression and trip-hop textures. You find yourself thinking of various reference points, such as ‘Play Me, Annie’, which sounds like a more high-def Unknown Mortal Orchestra; all elegant guitar octaves interplaying with earworm vocals. Then there’s ‘Drug Of Choice, whose moody swagger is very Nine Inch Nails-coded. However, LaFramboise’s undeviating musical signifiers ensure that every digression still resembles his mercurial vision.
The album also sometimes shifts into an especially engaging maximalist mode. ‘On Ice’ is the album’s finest display of its creator’s musical imagination. Defined by repeated blasts of distortion that slice through the track like a carving knife, it’s loaded with those trademark acoustic guitars and strange, hypnotic rhythms. This allows the track to quickly oscillate between serene and unsettling. ‘Whoever You Are…’ also layers abrasive textures atop these signature gentle foundations, this time spreading a bright synth or guitar (it’s intentionally hard to tell) melody over the track like the colourful glaze on a sugary dessert.
This ability to collide contradictory moods across brief moments is what gives ‘Slather On The Honey’ its edge. It’s both a testament to LaFramboise’s skills that he’s able to do this while still making accessible indie-pop (to place him in a very loose genre) and also to our current pop culture milieu, which is increasingly at ease with works of fascinating, yet wholly intuitive, complexity.
Details
Release date: January 16 2026
Record label: 444%
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