Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino was born in Japan, a country still mending from last year’s tragic tsunami and earthquake. Her heart still in her homeland, Makino organized the benefit album We Are The Works In Progress with the help of some fellow musicians, including Interpol, Four Tet, John Maus, and more.
We Are The Works In Progress is a decidedly haunting assortment of songs. Emphasizing substance over style, the featured artists take all the time they need to unfurl their shimmering compositions and flatten out the wrinkles, leaving plenty of room for thought. You simply can’t hurry music like this.
Electronic mastermind Four Tet begins the album with rainy-day chirper “Moma,” before The Knife’s Karin Dreijer Andersson howls and yelps in her ambient creation, “No Face.” Given the album’s genesis, this pair of leadoff tracks might recall the darkness that seeped over Japan last March, a theme that limps further into the tracklisting.
Minimalist legend Terry Riley reworks an old tune of his, experimentalists Nosaj Thing and Pantha du Prince create swirling, textured beats, and Broadcast keeps it morose and melancholy with a previously tour-only track. Overcast skies might be an understated metaphor for this collection; it’s hard to find the sun in most of these tracks.
But the album’s best two songs suggest some brightness just beyond the clearing. The first comes from Makino herself in a remix of Blonde Redhead’s “Penny Sparkle,” in which her spirited whisper-vocals utterly gleam through the speakers. They’re goldenrod and strangely comforting in a dark time, like meeting the girl of your dreams at a funeral. The staggering chimes that open John Maus’s contribution “Castles in the Grave” offer one of the only spots of genuine glee on the whole album. “Castles” excites throughout its 2:27 runtime, doling out its joy with the rest of the world like a child eager to share a lick of her ice cream cone with her dog.
Interpol closes out We Are The Works In Progress with the nine-minute “Song Seven,” half-standard glum-rocker and half-dreamy meditation. With the hour of emotional weight that preceded it, it’s necessary to decompress and offer up some real rumination during this time. Time to think about this world and what it could end up leaving us with — or without.
All proceeds from the album go to charities benefitting Japan, including Japan Society and Architecture for Humanity.
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