Gentle Leader XIV – Joke in the Shadow
Gentle Leader XIV evoke a sense of grandeur through the sparsest of means. The drama that the Ohio group harness and sculpt on “Pig Dream,” the leadoff track on their second album Joke In the Shadow, suggests something so much bigger than it is. Through shimmering curtains of darkwave chorus effects and a slow build toward art-pop ecstasy, Maria Jenkins’ powerful, Kate Bush-like vocals breathing a more melancholic emotionalism into the gorgeous display, Gentle Leader XIV almost seem to disguise the fact that it’s powered by only a stark strata of synth, guitar and a barely-there percussive loop. It feels almost like a magic trick.
Arriving seven years after the release of their 2018 debut Channels, Joke In the Shadow, co-produced by Fotocrime‘s Ryan Patterson, makes the most out of the band’s less-is-more approach. Gentle Leader XIV deftly thread a needle through aesthetically seductive goth pop, minimal synth primitivism and ’80s pop grandeur, too idiosyncratic to be pastiche, yet firmly rooted in a new wave and post-punk palette. The group, much like their Ohioan neighbors in The Serfs, have both impeccable taste and a particular knack for spinning raw elements into a dazzlingly rich finished product.
There’s a crisp yet underpolished quality to Joke In the Shadow that helps retain some of the mystique inherent to Gentle Leader’s goth minimalism. A standout like the dubby darkwave samba of “Fawning” feels too loose in its hips for coldwave, but it nonetheless its arrival feels like the discovery of a lost D.I.Y. cassette from 1982. There’s a little more space-age wobble in the aureole of “Woman Walking,” even as the song is more sleek in its gloom-drenched sound than outright playful. Yet the three-chord simplicity of the title track, complete with Jenkins’ commanding vocal presence, provides a stark and stoic canvas upon which the group stacks up several layers of guitar. It’s less a showcase for excess than a tasteful juxtaposition of textures, wild and fuzzy punk rock abandon finding harmony with an almost meditative, Kraftwerk-like rhythmic sensibility.
At times, Gentle Leader XIV almost seem to go out of their way to pursue the challenge of stripping a song back to its barest elements in order to reduce it to its most essential parts. “Reverser” is one of those moments, built on little more than a spare throb of a heartbeat, a haunted series of synth chords and Jenkins’ plaintive vocals (and, eventually, some more guitar). It’s one of the most effective and affecting pieces here, a nocturnal shiver of a song with vapor on its breath. By comparison, something like “Bomb Pop,” with added vocal layering effects, harsher guitar leads and a deep groove, feels postitively opulent. It’s that subtly versatile sense of economy and scale that give Gentle Leader XIV more freedom to tinker with their analog parts and rebuild them in new and interesting shapes, finding an elegant balance with only what they need.
Label: Feel It
Year: 2025
Similar Albums:
