Album of the day: Jesu – Opiate Sun

Lovingly pinched from Pitchfork: The EP might be the ideal format for Justin Broadrick’s music, regardless of his alias. Whether he’s trying to erase your head via concrete-slab guitars in Napalm Death, reduce techno to a series of clockwork hammerblows with Final, or massage your pleasure centers with neo-shoegaze in Godflesh, Broadrick’s music has a laudable singularity. The three-or-four-song dose mainlines his all-consuming mood of the moment without the potential dilution of trying to fill up a CD.

Broadrick claims to be channeling his long-unused (or presumed non-existent) pop instincts via Jesu, and the band’s DNA always has too much of hard rock’s cathartic oomph and pop’s peaks and valleys to pass for ambient. But Jesu’s extended-players like Silver, Lifeline, and now Opiate Sun do seem to bring out Broadrick’s more memorable riffs and choruses. If nothing else, they foreground those riffs and ringing climaxes in a way that the hour-plus ebb-and-flow of Jesu or Conqueror isn’t designed to do.

Opiate Sun isn’t as good as the all-over bodiless sparkle of Lifeline, which may be the best non-collaborative release in Broadrick’s unwieldy discography. It’s more of a Jesu sampler, a four-song distillation of the band’s major modes, with some of Broadrick’s most accessible, ingratiating songwriting– radio-ready if not for the tempos and the fuzz.

Continue reading:  Pitchfork: Album Reviews: Jesu: Opiate Sun.

Tags: album of the day, Caldo Verde, Jess Harvell, jesu, Justin Broadrick, Opiate Sun, pitchfork

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 13th, 2010 at 11:38 am and is filed under 2010, Album of the Day, Roadburn Recommended . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.