Review: Dirty Beaches - Stateless
By Eli Schoop, Contributor
[Zoo Music; 2014]
Rating: 7/10
Key Tracks: “Stateless,” “Displaced,” “Time Washes Away Everything”
Alex Zhang Hungtai has made a living off drifting across the earth. He's taken shelter in places like Montreal, Taipei, Hawaii, and a varied assortment of locations that span across the globe. In this regard, his music reflects what he's felt throughout the exoduses that have accompanied his entire life. Stateless, the last of his project Dirty Beaches, is the most pointed attempt at conveying the alienating ennui that comes with not feeling like you have a home.
One of the most prominent aspects of this record is how different it entirely feels from every other Dirty Beaches record. Hungtai made his name off gothic rockabilly-esque punk; it's a very surprising stylistic change here, a wholly ambient musical affair. But for the themes at hand, there's no doubt this was for the better, as the all-encompassing feeling of figurative homelessness is well-crafted and poignant.
Since it's only four songs, Stateless is broken up into two extended acts. Both represent the different intricacies that envelope how Hungtai conceptualizes the state of tension and panic induced by being partly or even completely unaware of your current surroundings. “Displaced” rises and falls like crashing waves, the droning ambiance filling your ears as it pulses throughout. It feels repetitious but in the most piercing form, as though it unravels and constantly changes to craft a somber, enveloping mood.
“Stateless” is even more consuming, monolithic in its scope and occasionally awe-inspiring. There's always this imposing span of time when the sheer size of Hungtai's vision regarding Stateless can be too overwhelming, but it's hard not to be impressed by how dense the music can really get on this record.
The second half is less overt but doesn't lose any of the drama or consistency that is brought forth by the first. “Pacific Ocean” reflects its title, as the song echoes with a prismatic clarity that is relaxing whilst still auditorily sonically arresting. It's a very surprising turn for Hungtai, whose material usually consists of more confrontational, direct pieces; although it's not as impactful, it certainly leaves a valid statement as to the more open ideas that he's conveying in the album.
The last track, “Time Washes Away Everything,” completes the Dirty Beaches mythology wisely and radiantly. It combines the more frightening, melancholy overtones of the first two songs with the positive atmosphere given off by “Pacific Ocean” to form a strained uncertainty, billowing in the expanse of time. The viola and saxophone intertwined here mark a mediation of the future, and makes peace with itself and the LP as a whole as it ends.
Unexpected yet not at all in of the realm of possibility for Hungtai, Stateless is not so much an ending statement as it is another evolution for the 34-year-old. Undaunted by his previous works, he set out to define his identity in the form of ambient grandiosity and how that's laid out is eternal and flooring. Rest in peace, Dirty Beaches.
