Flat Party Lean Into the Unsettling and the Baroque With ‘Madonna’

With all the talk that’s been had about art rock in recent years, the genre remains somewhat elusive and hard to pinpoint. Marked by highly ambitious experimentation, a love of the theatrical, and the exploration of unusual sounds, the work of artists labelled as art rock is however still as varied as can be, ranging from synth-pop to post-punk and including every possible contamination in between. Blurry around the edge as it is, the genre does its best when it leans into the more visceral emotions music is able to elicit, including and indeed especially unsettling and uncomfortable ones. Music is, after all, an extremely effective tool to explore the darkness of the human soul: when an artist confronts that darkness and finds a way to portray it through sound and word without feeling the need to produce a moral commentary alongside it, the result is all the more thought-provoking precisely because of the discomfort it forces its listener to inhabit. 

Flat Party’s new single, ‘Madonna’, is a textbook example of this process done right. The track is a further glimpse at the sextet’s new EP, ‘It’s All Been Done Before’, out in November for Submarine Cat Records, a label which has been showing time and again a willingness to support experimentation in its artists – often with excellent results.

Here the experimentation has undoubtedly been taking Flat Party towards the darker end of the spectrum, at least tonally – there is little trace if any, in this latest track, of the vein of humour which, however black, was practically always present in their previous work. In terms of sound, however, this willingness to play with different influences has also resulted in a greater acceptance of the fact that sometimes more is better: more distorted, more layered, pounding its listener with well-dosed repetition, the track understands that a stripped-down expression would not be the best fit for its themes. It is, after all, a song about toxic masculinity and sexual intimidation, which makes the bold move of narrating from the perspective of the aggressor, and it has to hit hard in order to achieve what it’s setting out to do. Even just from the lyrics, which manage to constantly linger on the edge of creepy without ever taking that step too far which would make them over-egged, it is clear that the ultimate aim of ‘Madonna’ is to make its listener experience the oppressive feeling that comes with being on the receiving end of a specific kind of attention. Musically, it does so by borrowing some of the stylistic signatures of classic synth-rock, especially the German branch which has been more strongly contaminated by house music; but the dominant element in the track remains mood, and it is on its ability to evoke a mood that it especially relies, with a vocal delivery that is almost a piece of method acting, ultimately the most important element in making this song impactful.

More than anything else, this single feels brave, on multiple levels: brave, without doubt, not only in its choice of subject but in the almost impressionistic way it chooses to approach it; and brave in that it doesn’t shy away from making its audience inhabit a space of discomfort. Art as a whole – and if Flat Party are indeed producing art-rock, whatever the exact definition of the genre, then the art element must definitely count for something – has, at least in the last century or so, often produced its most interesting results when it has dabbled with discomfort and explored the way in which discomfort can lead to catharsis. There is, at the end of this track, a lingering feeling that has something of the cathartic: like the earnestness of the experience, the way in which the song doesn’t try to water down the unpleasantness of its subject matter, has a powerful effect that goes beyond the merely descriptive. Then, musically speaking, there is a different form of bravery in accepting and indeed leaning into this almost-baroque sound which feels relentless, hammering in places, even breathless towards the end. 

In all of these senses this track, and Flat Party’s recent output more broadly, have been bucking a number of recent trends as far as alternative music in general, and art rock in particular, are concerned. It was a risky move, perhaps even a gamble; the end result is something which some might find unsettling, if not even unpleasant – but, paradoxically, in the best of ways. It is fair to say, then, that the gamble was successful.

 

Chiara Strazzulla

@cstrazzull

Image: Emma Swann