There’s a kind of idiotic joy in doing the thing you know might end with blood on your shirt, a phone call at 3 a.m., or somebody asking what in God’s name you were thinking. Maybe that’s the point. Responsibility has its virtues, sure, but it has lousy rhythm. Danger gives stupidity a backbeat. You leap, you laugh, you watch the floor come up fast, and afterward you stand there amid the wreckage with a shrug that says maybe it was worth it, maybe it wasn’t, and maybe asking the question ruins half the fun anyway. Consequences are tomorrow’s problem.
Bad decisions have always needed better music.
Nobody ever ruined their life because the bassline was too sensible, and Copenhagen-born artist In Atlas seems to understand that civilization periodically requires somebody to hand the evening over to the little red bastard sitting on your shoulder. Tears, Poison, Desire, the first single from her forthcoming Hyperreal LP, out November 5 through Detriti Records, concerns that exquisite stretch of time when every warning sign has become decorative.
You can hear Lizzy Mercier Descloux in its crooked dance-floor instincts, Lene Lovich and Suburban Lawns in its elastic theatricality, and a buzzing chaos reminiscent of Suicide, Tuxedomoon, and DAF lurking around the song’s machinery. The beat keeps things moving while the voice plays around its edges, cool one second, knowingly absurd the next. Dark disco becomes less a genre designation than an excuse to behave badly under flattering dancefloor lights.
And why shouldn’t it? Half the supposed wisdom of adulthood consists of learning exactly which pleasures you’re expected to decline, usually because somebody older already enjoyed them first and left you the cleanup bill.
“Let’s say its about coming apart in the desire for some sort of liberation, or maybe its about having fun, or maybe about having a kind of fun you don’t really want to have, being spurred on by that little red guy on your shoulder,” says the artist. “Playing with fire, then playing with the embers, then playing with gasoline.”
Now that is a philosophy worth dancing to.
The important word may be “gasoline,” because fire is charming enough when it belongs to candles and cigarettes; eventually somebody discovers what happens when you pour something stupid onto it. Desire works similarly. So does freedom. Push either far enough and you may find yourself staring at the remains the next morning, unable to decide whether you have learned anything or merely acquired a better story.
Listen to Tears, Poison, Desire below, or via streaming here.
That ambivalence runs through the upcoming Hyperreal, an album concerned with escapism and private worlds meeting an uncooperative reality. In Atlas, also one half of Greek/Danish duo V.V.I.A. alongside Venus Volcanism, seems drawn to the ecstatic and ridiculous point where pleasure starts growing teeth.
Perhaps consequences deserve respect. They are very punctual. But while Tears, Poison, Desire is blaring, tomorrow can stand outside and knock.
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