At its most reductive, the ongoing political debate about the rising socialist tide and socialism’s relationship to capitalism can be boiled down to this question: Are people made stronger when they compete or when they cooperate? On Lower Dens’s fourth album, The Competition, the band’s lead singer and songwriter, Jana Hunter, questions the notion that competition is essential to human progress. The world Hunter conjures is bleak, a picture of the wages of fully capitalized human relationships.
For Hunter, the problem is that “the competition” is rigged. In the face of a fixed game, the albums suggests, the oppressed have to strike back. “Empire Sundown,” which confronts income inequality, aims for retribution, not equity: “Look them in the eyes when they push you/Off the raft and make them watch you drown.” The chance to fix things has come and gone, and Hunter doesn’t want solace, but revenge. The pointedly titled “Young Republicans” finds Hunter taking on the mindset of the opposition. The song isn’t a call for empathy though; the titular figures cynically usurp the language of the oppressed, protesting that “we never asked to be this way.” Hunter pulls no punches, having them celebrate a type of anti-humanity, gloating that they were “born without souls or blood or skin.”
Hunter’s lyrics are spare but ghastly, and human carnage is a major motif throughout The Competition. On “Buster Keaton,” which takes its name from the great stone face of silent film, a young lover is forced to confess his feelings in the middle of sewing his mouth shut, spitting blood on his beloved. “In Your House” imagines a snake infiltrating a home and devouring the inhabitants, a metaphor for the costs of capitalism, while “Galapagos” concerns a volcano rising from the ocean, the planet threatened by “fire from the earth below.”
The world of The Competition is one driven by scarcity and overrun by the Hobbesian war of all against all. There’s no call for reconciliation or understanding, just a dark picture of a world in perpetual conflict. Lovers, families, and bodies are all rent asunder, all victims of our valorization of competition as the highest form of human organization.
Despite the forceful and overtly political nature of the songs, Lower Dens isn’t working in a traditional protest-song style. Rather than fist-pumping anthems or confessional folk songs, The Competition is full of tracks with glittering synth-pop arrangements that draw heavily on new wave. Lower Dens began as a post-rock influenced band, and they’ve embraced a bigger pop sound with each of their albums. Indeed, the style here is lush and orchestral, giving a rich accompaniment to Hunter’s powerful voice, which can move from sing-songy hiccupping to dark-night-of-the-soul keening within a single line.
The album’s sonic influences are also part of its political strategy. The intense polarization of our current moment was arguably born out of the 1980s, and the album draws on forebears like Depeche Mode and OMD. Where those bands were more interested in romance and personal drama, though, Lower Dens has larger geopolitical issues on their mind. The Competition uses the aesthetics of the ’80s dance floor to try to understand the rising tide of global nationalism. That makes it an easy listen despite its divisive subject matter.
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