Track listing: Never., We All Die, Tell It To My Liver, Paradise, Keep Me Sane, Idiot, im afraid, Interconnected, I Kan't Read, Glory, Hawkeye, Cold Shower, Forever Gone, Energy, I Kan't Read!, Pt. 2, Wish It Was Simple
With We All Die, New England multi-genre artist Son & Po leans harder into rock while continuing to disregard the boundaries between genres. The result is an album that can feel deliberately rough around the edges, moving from rap and punk to psychedelic rock, grunge, folk and classic rock without much concern for conventional transitions. “Never.” kicks things off with an early-'80s rap-inspired beat, a ghoulish, Halloween-y theremin-like melody and an atonal guitar solo that eventually gives way to a chunky, punk-flavored rhythm guitar. The title track takes a considerably more wistful turn, recalling the hazy melancholy of an Oasis ballad while adding its own psychedelic edge—and, naturally, another wonderfully off-kilter guitar solo.
Things get darker with “Tell It To My Liver,” which carries the weight of Ozzy-era Black Sabbath in its DNA. A raw, single-note guitar riff drives the song forward, while elsewhere the album begins settling into a strange but compelling intersection of classic rock and '90s punk/grunge. It’s a combination that suits Son & Po’s unfiltered approach particularly well. Rather than polishing away the rough edges, We All Die often seems to embrace them, giving the songs a homemade, immediate quality that makes the record feel more like a document of an artist following his instincts than a carefully engineered genre exercise.
That quality is especially apparent on “Hawkeye,” with its acoustic guitar, saxophone and wonderfully lo-fi vocal recording. There’s an almost John Lennon-demo quality to it—the sound of somebody sitting down late at night with a guitar, a microphone and a head full of ideas, perhaps after one too many psychedelic adventures. The album's many personalities can be heard throughout, and collaborator Adya Nadira adds another dimension on several tracks, including “Paradise,” “Keep Me Sane,” “Idiot,” “I Kan't Read!” and “Glory.” Her appearances help broaden the record without taking it away from Son & Po’s decidedly personal, DIY aesthetic.
We All Die ultimately feels less interested in being neat than in being honest. Son & Po describes his music as an unfiltered snapshot of his inner world, and that may be the best way to approach this album: as a collection of ideas, moods and musical impulses that don't always take the obvious route. The album closes with a stripped-down guitar-and-vocal piece that sounds almost like a lost '60s folk demo—or someone spontaneously letting loose around a campfire just outside Woodstock, New York in late 1969. It’s an appropriately loose ending to a record that spends its running time refusing to stay in one place.
If Son & Po's goal was to make a more rock-oriented album without losing the experimentation and unpredictability that define his music, We All Die is a pretty damn good way to do it.