Preoccupations Arrive with Self-Titled LP [Stream]

Preoccupations’ déjà vu début LP, Preoccupations, has risen. I recommend that you get your copy at a record store near you — today. Don’t hurt yourself when looking: you won’t find it under the name Viet Cong. The four lovely boys of Preoccupations have resurrected themselves with this (cultishly) memorable debut LP.

“Memory” sits at the very core of the album and heart of its universe with a series of dreadful recollections. “This is a new song; I guess it’s about someone that you know kinda losing their mind,” Matthew Flegel announced to a crowd in Sacramento. The album’s and song’s transitional brilliance is no coincidence: “It’s definitely been a transitional period of my life, and I’m sure that’s affected the music,” says Munro in an interview with The Skinny.

Dan Boeckner (Wolf Parade, Divine Fits, Handsome Furs) appears at a heroic time in “Memory,” triumphant and endlessly convincing at pique moments of the song, alongside the bearish Tom Toms that fade with upbeat iterations and emerge in a tantalizing stream. And Boeckner sings, “Our loneliness/ Arrives outside of line/ On time.”

The ending persists in a way that’s inexorable, but you might find something different every time. It’s a wash of gradual fuzz installments that introduce themselves piecemeal, and by the time you recognize the intricacies of the texture and winding patterns of the design, you’ve consumed the body in a way that’s reassuringly permanent. The rest is dessert.