The Year of Magical Listening – Details, episodes & analysis

FEATURING 

"NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD" by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, released by Constellation in 2024. Listen / Buy direct 
 

• "RAINDROPS CAST IN LEAD" 

TRANSCRIPT 

Must music have a meaning? Does it have any other choice? Obviously, music need not be representational; its sounds need not be taken to depict anything, concrete or abstract. But what, then, to make of the fact that music can so readily bring us into a certain feeling or state of mind or situation? Surely, such music must be said to be conveying something – something ineffable perhaps, but not void of sense. 

Even this music, what's playing right now, seems rich in significance, despite its minimal elements. I hear in it an unsteady serenity, a momentary peace, an eerie quiet, the calm before the storm, electricity in the air, bristling, quivering, full of foreboding. And then, the sky begins to rain down. 

The opening salvo is a simple motif on guitar, made jagged through layers of distortion and delay. But it is quickly joined by a cascade of supporting artillery: an unrelenting beat pounded out by the bass and the drums, a second guitar doubling the motif in a higher register, a counterpoint from a violin (or is it spiraling out of control?), the beat now hammered out by cymbals, propelling it on even further, and a third guitar, slicing through the burning sky. 

At last, the full cannonade arrives, and it's immediately disorienting, as the downbeat shifts below our feet, the two becomes the one and the one becomes the four: one last cataclysm in a whirlwind of chaos. 

Can there be any doubt as to what this music is trying to convey? It's hard to hear it as anything but a violent attack, a relentless assault, an inescapable blitz. Sounds howl through the air like missiles, made all the more terrifying by their patent coordination. The song's title describes it bluntly: "raindrops cast in lead". But there's another sound that can be heard, nestled deep within the maelstrom, an uncanny brightness amidst the unending destruction. I hesitate to try to say what it is. Some awful beauty? Some glimmer of hope? 

And then, a reprieve; and then, a disorientation of a different kind; and then, a voice – something rarely heard in this band's almost exclusively instrumental oeuvre. And it's not the voice of one of the band's members; it's not even in their, or my, mother tongue. So let me translate: 

Raindrops cast in lead 
Our side illuminated 
And then extinguished and buried and finished 
Under the perfect sun 
Under the body falling from the sky 
They were martyrs who fell 
Because on our side they are martyrs since before we were even born 
Those who tried and were killed for trying 
Those who died young, angry or old, and never saw the dawn 
Innocents and children and the tiny bodies who laughed and then fell asleep forever 
And never saw the beauty of the dawn 

"The beauty of the dawn" – is that what we were hearing earlier, barely audible beneath the barrage? Is that what we were hearing just before this, breaking through for a moment of interstitial tranquility? Is that what is now again being occluded, as the devastation starts anew? As we move into the song's second figure, a simple back and forth between two chords, between suspension and resolution, between tension and release, between uncertain possibility and brutal fact. 

And we're just getting started. This onslaught will continue for another three minutes – screeching, sundering, spinning out, filling the sky till there's nothing else, nothing but its program of annihilation. And there will always be more. Just when you think it's reached the height of its aggression, it gets even louder, even heavier, even noisier, even more wild and fierce. 

You may, at this juncture, very well be wondering, What's the point of all this? Sure, it's impressive, and unnerving, how this music can bring such a horrific scene to life. But it is, in the end, a representation, not to be confused with the reality, which is, of course, unspeakably worse. But representations can also show us aspects of reality that reality itself obscures. And so I come back to that note of awful beauty, the silver lining in the thundercloud, an indomitable spirit that can be heard beneath everything, despite everything, amidst the blistering violence an invincible glimmer of radical hope. 

But this music is not meant to be triumphant. It will present us with the possibility of resilience, but not its realization. Instead, it leaves us here, in haunting suspension, for there are many who will never see the beauty of the dawn.

FEATURING 

"Viderunt Omnes" by Pérotin, performed by The Hilliard Ensemble, recorded and released by ECM in 1989. Listen 

TRANSCRIPT 

In the beginning was the word – a mere syllable – a solitary tone. And then, there were several. And just like that, there was music: harmony, rhythm, dynamics – but more than that, a strange, otherworldly beauty that seems to appear out of thin air, suddenly floating above us and gracing us with its presence. 

What we are hearing is arguably the genesis of music as we know it, one of the earliest known pieces of polyphonic music in the Western musical tradition. It may in many ways appear rudimentary, its harmony of the simplest kind: a sustained drone in one voice while other voices bob and weave around it, producing a series of resonant intervals circling round their tonal center, and creating an utterly hypnotic harmonic soundscape. Simple, perhaps, but what majesty there is even in this. 

This music is captivating precisely because it doesn't seem like it should be possible, to pull such beauty out of thin air. How wondrous, that the mere arrangement of sound waves is sufficient to create something like this, so awesome and astonishing, as if it were always there, just waiting for us to tune into its frequency. It's like a tear in the fabric of the universe has been discovered, offering a glimpse into another world. 

Of course, this is all apropos to this music's raison d'être, seeing as it is literally sacred music – music of worship, music of the church, music designed to exalt an otherworldly being. But what I hear in this music does not seem tethered or limited to any particular religious tradition or faith. What I hear is music that is putting us in touch with the divine in the most universal sense – a divinity that is revealed to us through sound. 

And the most remarkable thing is that this divine revelation emerges from the most mundane elements. In other contexts, it may arise out of strings of catgut or rawhide skins; here, it comes about simply from the human voice. And to be sure, these are exceptionally beautiful voices, a paradigm of purity and discipline, moving in perfect coordination, and reverberating in an exquisitely sonorous space. But still, there is nothing supernatural in the mix; everything we hear is the product of human vocal cords and human vocal cords alone. The same instruments we use to talk and yell and argue and curse can also produce this. And that feels like magic. That feels like something that shouldn't be. 

How incredible that all of this would be present in music this primeval. But take that as a lesson, that music's revelatory powers have been there from the very start – that for as long as there's been music, it's had the capacity to fill us with wonder in this way. And the history of music is not some long march towards the perfection of this capacity, but rather an eclectic chorus of voices, all realizing this capacity to the fullest, but in new and singular ways. Which is to say, the history of music is like a series of worlds revealed to us, a sequence of curtains drawn back, none inherently better or truer than any other one, and all equally sublime. This piece of music may be one of the oldest extant examples of the art form, but its sound is timeless. 

Timeless, and also strange: the haunting swirls of voices, the glacial harmonic movements, the uncanny synchronicity. But this strangeness is precisely what makes the music so captivating, as if by holding it in our gaze we will spot how it works its conjuring trick. But of course the music resists our efforts and remains inscrutable. We can't ever truly explain it; all we can do is take it in. But that's why we listen. That's why we can't look away. And if this piece teaches us anything, it's that music has always been this way, and always will. 

FEATURING

"Fairytale of New York" by The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl, from If I Should Fall from Grace with God released by Warner Music in 1988. Listen


TRANSCRIPT

Here's another one that fell through the cracks, another song I have no right not to have heard until now. And I couldn't even get to it in time for Christmas. But like the song's narrator, let's pretend that it's an earlier time and take this as an opportunity to reminisce on Christmases past, on better and worse years, and on dreams once held.

If you, like me, are new to this song, it's a parable in three acts, the story of a couple of immigrant kids finding their way to New York City and each other. And it begins here, in the way young love often does, with tenderness and hope, a feeling that makes everything seem ready to burst open with excitement and anticipation.

The song seems to understand so much about life, like how falling in love with a person often coincides with falling in love with a place. Or how nothing makes a new place feel more like home than coming across a piece of where you came from, like seeing the local police choir singing an old Irish tune.

But the song also understands that new love never stays so pretty, and in its second act it shows how quickly those initial feelings of jubilation can sour, as the young lovers viciously bicker back and forth. And there it is again, that reminder of where they came from, now seeming like a symbol of the inescapability of who they were and still are.

So how does it all end? In a word, ambivalently. Our lovers are civil again, but not without grievance. Because the song understands that the most powerful relationships in our lives are never simply one thing, but those where tenderness exists alongside bitterness, where the things we cherish most dearly are also those that break our heart.

It's no fairytale romance, but it's all the more poignant because of that. It's no cheery Christmas carol, but it's none the lesser for it. And the song itself is no pristine composition, either; it's imperfect, and weird, and rough around the edges. But that's precisely what makes it so affecting. It's a celebration of life in all its messiness and complexity, and what better to celebrate on Christmas Day than that.

FEATURING

"Psychedelic Switch" by Carly Rae Jepsen, from The Loveliest Time, released by 604 Records in 2023. Listen


TRANSCRIPT

This is an ode to my song of the year – the song I played more times than any other song, and that played in my head countless more times than that – a perfect song, an electric song, an unstoppable, irresistible song that never failed to sweep me up and carry me away.

This song's pleasures are immediate and undeniable. But like the last time I talked about this artist, we must be careful not to overthink this music. Because what it's really about is that feeling that it stirs up inside us – that euphoria, that release, that palpable satisfaction. This isn't music to analyze; it's music that's here to make us dance and laugh and throw all our other cares away.

But there is, I believe, a little more to this song, and so at the risk of flouting my own advice, I'm going to overthink it a bit. Because I do think this song is telling us something, or at least discloses it by the by amidst its revelry and exuberance.

On its surface, this is a song about the transformative power of love: its capacity to act as a "psychedelic switch", to flip our minds into a new mode and change the very way we see the world, such that all our prior worries dissipate in the face of this new feeling. But this song is also unmistakeably a song about the transformative power of music, and its capacity to act upon us in precisely the same way. More than any other art form, music has the ability to lift our spirits in an instant. More than any other art form, the experience of music can be as euphoric and intoxicating as the experience of love. More than any other art form, music can even be indistinguishable from our emotions themselves. Like the singer says, they were "a sad, sad song" before. But now, with this song, it's like a psychedelic switch.

And what is it like to be in such a beatific state? The singer sums it up in a single lyric: they'd be "satisfied forever with a couple of years of this". Like love, music doesn't need to be timeless to be worthwhile or meaningful or even life-changing. Some of the most important pleasures we feel are ephemeral ones. And music doesn't let us forget that, because music, in the best cases, makes us feel it. So here's to my song of the year, which even if it's just for this year and no others, is more than enough to keep me satisfied forever.

FEATURING

Motewolonuwok by Jeremy Dutcher, released by Secret City Records in 2023. Listen / Buy direct (digital | physical)
 

• "Skicinuwihkuk"

TRANSCRIPT

The first sounds we hear are the music of nature: the harmonies of birdsong, the rhythm of the land underfoot. The next sounds we hear are the music of language: poetic speech in a seldom-heard tongue. It's like an invocation of the music that is always everywhere all around us, if only we learn to listen, even if we don't understand.

And so begins the music proper, which feels like an invocation of a different kind, an invocation of the magical power inherent in sound, that's always there just waiting for a maestro to pick up the right threads and weave them together and make something beautiful that shakes us to the core.

It's often said that music transcends language, and that's certainly the case here. I, at least, do not understand this music's lyrics, but that does not at all stop me from recognizing the pathos in these words. Yet something deeper is also going on. It must be said that this music is sung in a language whose living speakers number only in the hundreds – an "endangered" language, which is to say, a language that has historically been persecuted and suppressed and is now being intentionally revived and carried forward. In singing in this language, the artist isn't just translating it into a medium that all can understand and feel; they are breathing life into the language itself.

And just as the language is animated by this music, the music is animated by this language, giving birth to a musical idiom all its own, melding the contemporary with the classical, the anthemic with the intimate, and the rousing with the hypnotic. It's a performance that's positively brimming with life, leaving us to wonder at what other music there must be in sounds yet unheard, in songs yet unsung, in words yet unspoken, and in acts yet undone.

FEATURING

"Solo for Tamburium" by Catherine Christer Hennix, composed and performed for MaerzMuzik in 2017, and released by Blank Forms Editions in 2023. Listen / Buy direct

TRANSCRIPT

A constellation of notes slowly comes into view, filling up the night sky with light. From darkness comes illumination; from silence comes reverberation; from nothing comes, seemingly, everything – every pitch, every harmony, every resonance, all at once.

We are abruptly thrown into a swirling cosmos of sound, surrounded by an unfamiliar polyphony. We are momentarily lost in a foreign musical landscape, unmoored from the customary landmarks of melody, rhythm, and thematic development. And then, with time, we are gradually transformed, as this music works its magic upon us, bringing us into its mesmerizing world, inducting us into its greater mysteries, elevating us to its astral plane, and allowing us to come in contact with its musica universalis, the harmony of the spheres.

In the common parlance of musical typology, this piece would most commonly be labelled as "minimalist", for how it eschews music's conventional variety of timbres, textures, dynamics, and themes. But for all its minimalism, this piece feels like it contains everything within it and encompasses the totality of harmonic space. It would seem just as appropriate to label it "maximalist".

And fittingly, for all that this music feels utterly unique, it was not in fact fashioned ex nihilo. It speaks a new, distinctive vernacular, but it's a vernacular in conversation with other, well established traditions, like the Indian raga and the Arabic maqam. It is played on a new, synthetic instrument, but it's an instrument that was constructed entirely out of other, acoustic instruments, meticulously sampled so that they could be reworked, recombined, and replayed. It's like this music was already there, in potentia, in these other sounds, just waiting to be discovered, a shimmering universe hidden within.

The piece will go on like this for seventy-eight minutes, but seventy-eight minutes doesn't feel like its true length. It doesn't really have a beginning, middle, and end. It fades in at its start and fades out at its close, as if the piece in fact goes on forever, and we are just catching a glimpse as it passes us by, like a satellite crossing the heavens. And so it continues, slowly unspooling and imperceptibly changing, deepening and expanding but staying fundamentally the same.

The piece will go on like this for seventy-eight minutes, but what strikes me most about this music is how it seems in every instant to be self-contained, as if it doesn't need to play out over time at all, as if every moment holds within it the potentiality of every other moment, like a musical fractal geometry, infinitely repeating no matter how far you go in. It is music that is in time, but not of it; music without any essential duration; music that transcends the temporal dimension; and music that lifts us out of time as well, to share in its eternal present. It is music that recalls that line from William Blake, showing us what it's like to:

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

The piece will go on like this for seventy-eight minutes, but by the time we finally reach that point that number will lose its meaning. It will feel like we've been listening for all of time and for no time at all. Because infinity cannot be contained in any length of time, and thus is equally imperfectly contained in all of them. We may never be able to truly comprehend this music; like infinity, it's too much for us finite beings to take in. But we can listen and allow ourselves to be in its presence, to let our sense of time dilate and our consciousness expand as everything else evaporates into the ether and only this music, in its limitless potential, remains.

FEATURING

Javelin by Sufjan Stevens, released by Asthmatic Kitty in 2023. Listen / Buy direct
 

• "Will Anybody Ever Love Me?"

TRANSCRIPT

The first thing I noticed was how familiar it all felt: this fingerpicking, these harmonies, this dear little voice. And more than that, the distinctive flood of emotions that was instantly stirred up inside me. This music felt – and still feels – like reuniting with an old friend, or revisiting an old home, or catching sight of an old lover, or recalling a loved one now lost – a resurgence of suppressed feelings and memories, suddenly foisted upon you. I've been listening to this songwriter for nearly twenty years; I can no longer imagine what it's like to hear them for the first time. I can only experience this music as a return, to a place of unbridled emotional vulnerability, that place this songwriter has brought me to so many times before. Though I'll admit, it is not somewhere I always wish to return. The thing about these songs is that they can almost be too tender, too fragile; and a heart can only endure so much ache. Listening to this music is like staring at the sun, a direct confrontation with the strongest and rawest of our feelings, feelings we typically don't dare to express. It can be tempting to avert one's eyes. But it can also be gratifying to be reminded of this capacity within us to hurt and to long deeply. In a way, this music is more honest with ourselves than we are, letting us feel what we so often don't allow ourselves to feel. Every time this songwriter comes to us with more of these songs, it's like a reaffirmation of life's true emotional weight – how it can wreck us, how it can humble us, and how it can, occasionally, show us grace. It is not a place we can bear to remain for too long, but it is comforting to allow ourselves to be held here for a moment, in the songwriter's delicate embrace.

FEATURING

Fountain Baby by Amaarae, released by Interscope Records in 2023. Listen / Buy direct
 

• "All My Love"
• "Angels in Tibet"
• "Co-Star"

TRANSCRIPT

I loved this music from the moment I heard it, from the very first notes of its opening melody, with its haunting oscillation between dominant and tonic, and this ghostly choir of distant voices gradually surfacing amid a groundswell of strings. And I'll admit, I can't quite say what it is about this music that enthralled me so immediately, or what strange magic flows within these sounds, but I knew, instinctively, from the moment I heard it, that this would be music like nothing I'd ever heard before.

This song throws so much at you all at once, it's hard to know where to begin, but let's start with the rhythm. The beat is all syncopation, hitting hard on the one and then subdividing the rest of each measure in a mix of threes and fours. It's urgent and aggressive and unrelenting, like waves crashing down on you while you try to gasp for air.

Then there's the percussion, which forgoes the typical pop and sizzle of snares and hi-hats in favour of an ensemble of pitched drums and rimshots, lending an acoustic warmth and energy to a song that is otherwise a club banger.

But what we really need to talk about is this voice: this whispery soprano that, for all its delicacy, stands toe to toe with the drumline and somehow commands the whole performance. It's not at all what you'd expect, especially for a song that's so raw and raunchy, with such memorable lines as "I want to fuck a puddle" and "I'll Lindsay a Lohan".

But that's the beauty and the genius of this song. It's absolutely singular in its sound, and it all works because it says it works, because it fully commits to being fully itself, and because it knows that it's an unstoppable force of nature.

And like nature itself, it can change in a flash, turning from a downpour into a drizzle, as light as raindrops bouncing off your skin. Now, everything feels playful and buoyant, as bouncy as the bass synth and as feathery as the harp's arpeggios. The music has metamorphosed from a heavy rain into a misty vapour, while somehow remaining, in its essence, the same. This is a multitudinous music – music that can, at one moment, inundate and overpower, and then, in the next, refresh and rejuvenate.

And that's why it's so fitting that the overarching metaphor of this record is water, in all its elemental guises. It floods and it cools. It drowns and it hydrates. It makes waves and cuts canyons. It gives life and brings death. It's the sweat on your chest and the shower on your face. It's a symbol of tranquility and a symbol of devastation. It's a symbol of arousal and a symbol of rebirth. And all the same could be said about this music. It overwhelms, it revitalizes, it makes us wet. It's an unending stream of musical styles and ideas, cycling between countless different forms and textures, swelling and receding, ebbing and flowing, spilling over in abundance, and ultimately leaving us to float on its endless fathomless sea.

FEATURING

Maps by billy woods and Kenny Segal, released by Backwoodz Studioz in 2023. Listen / Buy direct

• "Soft Landing"
• "The Layover"
• "FaceTime"
• "NYC Tapwater"

TRANSCRIPT

Here's a little secret: When I listen to music, the lyrics are typically what I hear last. I am drawn to the sounds and harmonies and rhythms; but the words often pass me by. Which may make a lyrical genre like hip-hop seem like it'd be a nonstarter for me. But of course it isn't; for how could you pass up music like this?

Though actually, maybe hip-hop is an easy sell for a listener like me, because hip-hop is about so much more than the literal words. Even before you can make out a single lyric, you can feel what this music is expressing. It's in the MC's voice, with its sure-footed delivery and breathless flow. It's in the DJ's production, with its languid boom-bap and far-off horns like sirens. It's tuned every aspect of its sound to create a feeling that is at once laid-back and confident and filled with a sense of underlying dread. And what could be more musical than that?

But this isn't just music that you can vibe to. This is lyrical music at the end of the day, and it's in its words that it truly distinguishes itself. Its verses are densely packed poetry, and even before you can start parsing their content, you can luxuriate in the pure sound of the language – the effortless flurry of assonant syllables ricocheting off each other in syncopated slant rhymes and the way each phrase seems to fall out in a natural rhythm as it rolls off the tongue. The words just sound good, independent of what they mean or what they're being used to say, showcasing the musicality that's always there in language, just waiting for someone to coax it out.

Or maybe this is just me, continuing to avoid actually hearing the lyrics, and picking up on every other musical element instead. Not that the MC makes it easy to follow along. Even with a lyric sheet out in front of you, it can be hard to decipher what's being said. Lines shift between perspectives and timeframes and locales, feeling less like a sequential narrative and more like a stream of consciousness, a pastiche of vivid images flashing before the mind's eye:

The sunset in the desert...
I sip Mexico's best slow...
Unbroken wild ponies...
Only the lonely big tree like a sundial

But the fragmentary quality of the lyrics is by design. Because if this record is about anything, it's about being on the road – and not just in the sense of living an itinerant lifestyle, but more deeply in the sense of the state of mind that that life puts you in: how the continuous bombardment of unfamiliar sights and sounds can make you turn inward and how the constant movement from one place to another can end up grounding you in where you're from. That's why we find the MC, in the middle of a crowded party...

Smoking alone in a cardigan
Thinking of home

It's that feeling of double consciousness, of being physically in one place while being mentally in another, of being uncommonly receptive to the world around you while being trapped in your own thoughts and interiority, of being on the road while feeling like you've never left.

It's a vibe, to be sure, but more than its particular vibe, what I appreciate most about this music is the power of its language: its specificity, its creativity, its evocative nature. Even when I'm only catching passing glances of the lyrics as they zip by, I feel transported by the potency of the imagery. These are words that you can see, taste, and smell. The MC isn't just telling us about being on the road; they're bringing us along for the ride.

But all odysseys must come to an end. And so, in this last song, the MC returns home – but as they take in the sights of their New York City streets, nothing is how they remember it. All they see are new people, new buildings, new shops, new goods – and all they can think of is how things used to be. As they say, "I'm home, but my mind be wandering off." Because home isn't a place you can actually go back to, or rather, home is only a place you can go back to in your mind. And really, this is how we've been travelling all along. It's not about the places we go; it's about where those places take us – the thoughts they occasion, the memories they bring up, the way they direct and divert our attention, and the poetry they help us see in the world around us.

FEATURING

Nymph by Shygirl, released by Because Music in 2022. Listen / Buy direct

• "Woe"
• "Wildfire"
• "Firefly"
• "Coochie (a bedtime story)"

TRANSCRIPT

The music starts, and we are immediately surrounded by voices: oohs and aahs and scrambled chatter. It's like we've stepped inside the artist's mind and are about to discover what's there.

And when we arrive we are greeted by even more voices: a cooing baby, a smoky alto, a menacing guttural rattle. Then the voices start to swirl together, coalescing into an uneasy unison. The reverb feels endless, as the voices envelop us in their echoing chorus.

It's a sound that's like a dream, or rather, like the liminal space between sleep and waking, or the hazy hours at the end of a long night, those times when our thoughts begin to flicker in and out of consciousness and our sense of self starts to dissolve into the world around us.

If we've stepped inside the artist's mind, that mind has thus far only proven to be elusive, and we still have no idea of who this artist is.

And in case there were any question, this next song will not make the matter any clearer. Now the vocals themselves are warped and twisted, transformed into an unsteady warble. Instead of a kaleidoscopic medley of different voices, we have a single voice that's been splintered and shattered – like a broken mirror, providing only glimpses of the singer looking back at us. The singer even shifts between different kinds of vocal delivery, leaving us guessing as to whether they are singing or rapping or just whispering in our ear. Or maybe the point is that, with this artist, it's always all of the above.

What all this creates is a portrait of the artist that is, in effect, a blurry image – which is the perfect, and perhaps the only, way to portray an artist who is constantly shape-shifting and who has no single, stable identity to present.

And the music isn't always this same dark tone, either. If only to offer up more complexities and contradictions, the singer shows us that they can also go full-on pop. Here is a melody that is infectiously catchy, bouncy, and upbeat – but to keep us on our toes, it's laid on top of a beat that is punchy, glitchy, and frenetic. And to keep us even more on our toes, the song then turns on a dime, jettisoning everything but the low-end and letting the singer's voice reverberate in the newly open space. But before long, we're glitching back into the matrix, returning to the song's hyperpop chorus yet again. And even though the main vocal is now front and centre and crisp and clear, it is still surrounded by a whirlwind of other voices: high-pitched harmonizations, down-pitched repetitions, chopped up moans and exhalations – little reminders that, even at their poppiest, this singer is never just one thing.

And as if to prove the point, the singer shows us that they can also go full-on bubblegum. But of course, the singer is going to subvert these expectations, too, presenting us with a sugary sweet song about, well...

Leave it to this artist to take the most carnal of desires and turn it into something that could reasonably pass for a preschool sing-a-long. Leave it to this artist to compose an ode to the female body that is neither lewd nor inane nor even poetic but just fun. And even though you can practically hear the singer winking at us, you also get the impression that they're being completely earnest.

Because that's what you get with this artist – a polyphonic persona that's always presenting another side of itself, creating a playground for all the different voices inside their head and showing us, in all their multiplicity, just who they are.