ALBUM OF THE MONTH: Love, Guess Who?? (XXOOXX)
Soundtracking the end of the year with moody alt-pop from the underground.
“Who are you???"
Those were the first words Arthur Ashin, who makes music under the moniker Autre Ne Veut, said to me moments after the first time I had seen him perform.
They were followed by:
“Did the label pay you to be here?! Your energy fed me, I felt like we were giving each other energy the whole show.” (Mostly a paraphrase, but that was the spirit. The label question is a direct quote.)
I sheepishly replied, all of twenty two years old, that, no, I wasn’t a label plant, I just liked the album a lot, and was hoping to buy a record but there was no one at the merch table. (And that was me being polite: there was no merch table. There was a gray fold-out table with nothing but a cardboard box of records open underneath of it.) He directed me to his manager and disappeared into the crowd.
And, in a way, he disappeared from my life after that night. While I kept that album, Anxiety, in heavy rotation, his subsequent release didn’t hit for me in the same way and, eventually, he stopped making music and faded out of my music library.
Then, two years ago, Autre Ne Veut popped up on my radar: he dropped a single out of nowhere called ‘Okay’. It had all of what I loved about Autre Ne Veut: a perfectly rasped falsetto, low-end electronica that you can bathe in, and surprising composition that tells as much of the song’s story as the lyrics. I loved it.
Also… it continued his streak of tender and uncomfortably vulnerable promo art.
I didn’t know it at the time, but that was actually the first single from the final entry in his Autre Ne Veut album trilogy: Love, Guess Who?? (XXOOXX). I didn’t even know there was a trilogy planned! Some label-plant I was!
As I passingly mentioned in my last Album of the Month post, the singles from the album kept coming and my anticipation grew and, you guessed it, the anticipation was met so here we are.
Love, Guess Who?? (XXOOXX) mostly swings between sad sex songs and sad cry songs and so, yes, it is perfect for me. I guess it’s a ‘return to form’, but as it’s supposedly the end of the trilogy, I’m just happy Ashin can go out on a high note… and he sings some very high notes.
Autre Ne Veut gets down just as as easily as he breaks down. In ‘Itchy Blood’, over vintage House of Balloons Weeknd-esque production, he explores the ever fertile twin muses of horniness and sexual dissatisfaction. Shout out to the genius lyric ‘itchy blood’ by the way, so evocative!
Ashin has always been a masterful emotional contortionist; he sings as if he’s a sponge being squeezed, every last note he utters is wrung dry for maximum impact. Here, he crams syllables into the hyper specific first half of the verses only to slow down for second half half of the verse and wallow in his… shame? Embarrassment? Despair??? The answer is likely all of the above.
The myriad of self deprecations gradually escalates throughout the song until the final moment:
I wanted to know that you're with me/
You wanted to save me, my baby/
Won't save, won't save me, won't save me/
Can't save me
Yet, listening to the song, I don’t feel down at all: the song’s propulsive beat and practically triumphant melodies leave me feeling anything but. Ashin is a master of writing songs as purging rituals, songs that allow the grief and discomfort to move through my body as I dance, as I release.
It’s interesting. Both of the songs I’m choosing to single out are… singles (hehe). Usually, I find that when I listen to an album for the first time, singles stick out like sore thumbs; the context in which I first heard them supersedes the experience of listening to it in the context of the album. To be honest, that holds true for ‘Itchy Blood’.
‘Heavy Tho’ was released as the final single, a week before the album dropped.
With its ghostly back up vocals and gentle piano loop, ‘Heavy Tho’ plays like a lullaby: its circular, looping elements rock you to sleep even as it devastates. It grows and crescendos throughout a generous five minute playtime but never quite drops, leaving all the sorrow and pain the song engenders unresolved. Ashin exhibits exceptional restraint in songwriting; he loves catharsis, even excels at it, so it’s refreshing and marvelous to see him still tweaking and playing with his formula a decade on.
For a single, however, it was an odd choice.
Its placement in the album, though, changes the whole feel of the song for me. It now feels like a summoning of resolve to make it through the final stretch of songs. No longer is feeling heavy something to be ashamed of, but a badge of honor. It’s a pause, a reflection, an acceptance of what came before and what is yet to come.
In that same week leading up to the album drop, probably as I listened to ‘Heavy Tho’ for the first time, I clocked that Autre Ne Veut had an album release show at Public Records, a new coffee shop-record store-vegan restaurant-performance space (lol) in Gowanus.
Remembering how much I loved him live, I quickly bought tickets.
Near the beginning of the set Ashin looked nervous and admitted as much. He said he hadn’t performed for a long time and that music isn’t a big part of his life anymore. He wasn’t even sure if he would play another show (but for the right amount of money… who knows?)
He then shared he would not be doing an ‘encore’ as the venue was too hard to navigate so just trust that there would be something that felt like an ending and then two more songs. We laughed and he started into ‘World War’, the closing track from that excellent debut Anxiety. Beginning with an ending.
He played through the set, commenting on how high he wrote songs for himself, fully committing to the pathos weaved into every note and intoxicating the packed, intimate space of fans old and new. He ended the set with career highlight ‘Play by Play’ (which made it onto my 101 songs of the 2010s playlist… maybe I’ll release that at 100 subs.) That song closes with this simple refrain:
“I just called you up to get that play by play/
Don't ever leave me alone/
I just called you up to get that play by play”
It’s a desperate plea but it feels like euphoria. It’s one of those melodies that I could live in for the rest of time; suspended and endless.
I can’t quite tell you how long we were there, at the potentially final show of Autre Ne Veut, but it wasn’t long enough. The show ended, maybe the Autre Ne Veut project ended, to rapturous applause. The new songs from Love, Guess Who?? (XXOOXX) sounded right at home with his old classics; he even did a gorgeous, stripped down rendition of ‘Heavy Tho’. (He began that by shyly admitting he learned how to play guitar over the pandemic).
And then he just… walked off the stage. Another person in the crowd, no longer Autre Ne Veut but Arthur Ashin saying ‘hi’ and ‘thanks’ and letting go with all the other people in the space. A master of catharsis.
As my fiance and I got ready to leave, someone in front of me turned my way, looked me right in the eye and said ‘I loved being by you and feeling your energy. It made the night really special for me.’ And then left, another person in the crowd.
This is my last Album of the Month post of 2024. This year, I got to share my love of music, my recommendations, my humor, my stories, and, in all of that, share a bit of myself with you all. I think what draws me most to Autre Ne Veut, and most of the music I recommend, is how much of themselves they share in their writing as well.
While I’m just another person in your email, on the internet, on the Substack app (a special blessing to you app users), I do believe in my little micro-sphere of influence and choosing this album as my final post of the year is a test for myself and my beliefs.
Autre Ne Veut did say, if the money is right, he will keep performing. Right now, Love, Guess Who?? (XXOOXX) sits cumulatively at under 250,000 plays. My beloved microsphere- let’s bump these numbers and get a fourth Autre Ne Veut album; if we do, my ego will allow me to confidently state we played a part in that.
I’ve loved sharing my music recommendations with you all, it made the year really special for me.
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Thoroughly enjoying "World War Pt. 3," crystalline pop, thanks for the rec!
how do we tag Arthur