The Soft Pink Truth - Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase? (2020, Thrill Jockey)

 

All I’ve done for the past week, more or less,  is listen to conceptual ambient music and watch bad YouTube videos. I think both are starting to fuck with my head a little more than I’d like to admit. I sat down to write something endorsing The Soft Pink Truth’s newish album Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase but I keep coming back to this notion that I feel like I have to fix holes in my brain where I don’t “understand” concepts.

For days now I’ve been watching videos from the YouTube Commentary Community endlessly because I just don’t get it. I keep watching it in the hopes that I will eventually understand what drives a man to buy an expensive camera and make a call out video about someone else who made a call out video of someone else making a call out video of someone who is called out for not even the worst part of their persona (they’re all racists, like fucking all of them) but by doing it I think I’m feeding into a self perpetuating cycle of borderline Stockholm Syndrome where I’m slowly warping my brain to accept this as a valid art form. 

But I guess that begs the question: is it? I keep drawing this bullshit parallel between this and this moment late last year where my brain snapped and I only listened to things so far out of my wheelhouse that they were barely recognizable as art. I listened to an album of experimental, recontextualized traditional Irish bagpipe music, an album of manipulated field recordings of different jungles, and a lot of Bulgarian folk music. I did it partially because I wanted to “expand my horizons” but i think i just wanted to understand those art forms a little better. 

I don’t know what to call when you do immersion therapy for something that’s not therapeutic. I’m not sure if this process is helped by some semblance of reality, but that’s what Shall We Go On was like, and what a majority of the art I’ve been forcing myself to consume in the name of “understanding art” has been like. 

Is it a fruitless journey? Is there such a thing as “understanding” art in a holistic sense? Even if I could, where would I go from there? These are all questions I asked myself as my head bounced between sacraments and ambient techno. I feel like The Soft Pink Truth and I are coming from the same place, in a sense. I’m not sure The Soft Pink Truth understands and interprets the concept of “church” the same way most people would, but what they do understand is there is a certain musicality to everything and a certain rhythm to be found in stereotypically sterile spaces. 

My interpretation of that probably reveals more about my spiritual stances than Shall We Go On Sinning actually implies, but I think that’s kind of the point at the end of the day.  I struggle with the concepts of spirituality and religion as well. I grew up poker facing my way through youth groups, spiritual retreats, and Sunday service. I’d get asked “how has God talked with you?” and I wouldn’t know how to answer. It was like shouting a question from a rooftop - what would I even do if someone answered me? 

I hesitate to even refer to church as “sterile” because that’s a direct reflection of the way I have tried to close off my mind to spirituality. Clearly, for many, chapels and pulpits are lifegiving spaces. I think that’s why I keep returning to this record the same way I keep returning to YouTube drama. It’s the same reason I feel a fundamental need to bridge the disconnect I feel with certain art forms - the pursuit of some form of holistic knowledge of human connection and emotion. Something about the craftsmanship that goes into all of this conveyance really gets me, you know? 

There’s obviously something about Shall We Go On’s themes that resonate with me and I don’t think it’s because the themes themselves resonate with me. It’s because I don’t fully understand it. It’s not the only ambient techno record I’ve heard this year, nor is it objectively the “best” one I’ve heard this year. It meanders. It puts it’s form so far over function that it stumbles over it at times. But every time I listen to it I think of being made to go to Catholic mass when I stayed over at my friend Connor’s house as a kid. Nothing about it made sense to me. Why the bells? Why the sit/stand/kneel? Why the call and response ritual? I remember it so much more clearly than I remember the Methodist services I voluntarily attended because it baffled me. For so long I cast that aside and refused to pay any attention to it, potentially to the detriment of my personal growth and development. I feel insane saying it but, somehow, this ambient techno record has opened my mind up to it a little more 14 years on.

Understanding by way of recontexualization. Understanding by way of force feeding yourself enough of something to remap your brain to interpret it as positive input. They’re different, but I think one leads to the other. Watching YouTube cOnTeNt CrEaToRs bicker over who is a hypocrite has somehow led me to realizing my life may have room for more spirituality than I give myself credit for. Is that a sensible throughline? No, but nothing ever is. Shall We Go On sure isn’t either. Pulsating beats bounce off of bells. The songs range from dancefloor to chapel ready on a dime. In my limited experience with spirituality, I think that’s just kind of how it works. A moment of spiritual clarity isn’t always preceded or proceeded by monumental action. Everything and everywhere is full of a certain type of energy that binds. It’s not always about pushing your brain to the point of an awakening or breakthrough. Sometimes you just go back to watching YouTube and wondering what you’re going to do next.