Recoil, subHuman

The album art for subHuman, the latest album from ex-Depeche Mode man Alan Wilder’s Recoil “project” after a six-year hiatus, is about as ill-suited to the music as it could possibly be. I mean, what are listeners supposed to expect when they see the blank, sleek parts of fashion mannequins sticking out of some kind of sports car or draped across shiny, clean home interiors, but some kind of slickly-produced dancepop, right?

What they get, though, is a whole different ballgame. With this disc Wilder has grafted dark, foreboding electronic ambience onto gritty, murky swamp-blues, and the result is impressive. The songs are like Louisiana swamp-blues filtered through a sampler and spat out the other side to land at a muddy crossroads where the Devil waits to barter for souls. Raw, dirty guitars slide in and around and Massive Attack-ish beats skitter across, while Wilder’s main compatriot in crime, Austin-by-way-of-the-Atchafalaya-Basin bluesman Joe Richardson (who also happens to play all the guitars, it seems) shouts and grumbles.

Richardson’s big, earthy blues-shouter vocals fit perfectly with the gritty guitars and (mostly) understated electronic parts — the album may be Wilder’s, but Richardson’s the star, his voice and playing lifts subHuman above mere soundtrack and turns it into a bona-fide soul-shaking experience (although I have to say that the resemblance at times to Ry Cooder’s soundtrack work isn’t a bad thing). It’s no accident that the best tracks on here are the ones that feature the bluesman the most prominently. Take “Prey,” the album’s first track and the one that establishes the blueprint for most of the rest; those guitars skate across the swamp muck, dodging in and around deep, dark keyboard trickery while Richardson spins a bloody tale of voodoo and murder.

“The Killing Ground” takes things in a more country-blues direction, melancholy and methodical ’til about a third of the way through, when it cranks up and turns into an electro-blues stomper. Oh, and the song’s about Jesus being crucified, so there’s that to keep things cheery. “5000 Years,” for its part, is a grim warning of a song, admonishing the listener to heed history when it comes to war, hate, and fanaticism. The crunching, stomping rhythms bring to mind Mr. Bungle, switching out the scatalogical bits for samples of right-wing demagoguery and drilling soldiers.

The gears slip a bit on the more delicate, less bluesy tracks, but even then it works most of the time. “Allelujah” trades Richardson’s rough growl for Carla Trevaskis’s almost wordless, Dead Can Dance-esque vocals (just about all she says is “Allelujah” over and over again for most of the song), gliding over stark, whispery guitars for some Mezzanine-style murkiness. “Intruders,” on the other hand, also goes for Massive Attack territory but doesn’t incorporate enough variation in the beats or enough lyrics to really pull the song through (and no, it doesn’t help that the track’s 11-and-a-half minutes long). “99 To Life” misses the mark, as well, getting noisier and more explicitly “rock” but sounding scattered and chaotic, like a should’ve-been-lost Hendrix outtake.

Thankfully, the album closes with “Backslider,” which is the perfect soundtrack to a restless, heat lightning-cracked Southern night like this one; when the thunder rolls across the sky, I can almost hear the hellhounds baying. Richardson rumbles his way through a story of an addict who fights his demons but doesn’t truly want to win before the song crumbles to a mournful — but not truly repentant — finish of harmonica over fading guitars and metallic beats.