With Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds), Yves Tumor dials back their earlier explorations of rock and soul. All but three of the album’s 12 tracks clock in at around three-and-a-half minutes, with Tumor seeking to find a more tangible balance between the more conventional styles that dominated their recent releases with the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to instrumentation that’s become their hallmark. The final product is an album steeped in emotional anxiety and dejection that finds emotional power in its varied sonic palettes and searching lyricism.
Praise a Lord opens with the minimalist “God Is a Circle,” featuring a stiff beat and repetitive melody that manages to coalesce into a rather dark picture of anxiety and self-doubt. A withdrawn Tumor refers to “pieces of my heart that I can’t show” and “the places in my mind that I don’t know,” while ruminating on familial relationships. Whether Tumor is singing about themselves or presenting a third-person character study is unclear, but its impact remains the same, akin to being dropped into the middle of an all-consuming anxiety spiral.
Many of the album’s tracks attempt to find a balance within this (or a similar) frame of mind: “Lovely Sewer,” “Heaven Surrounds Us Like a Hood,” and “Echolalia” highlight a self-doubt that borders on self-hatred, as well as a striving for a sense of inner peace while struggling with existential dread. Sonically, the songs share similarly muscular, almost frantic beats, but mix in moody synths, strings, guitars, and vocal harmonies to great effect. Throughout, the atmosphere of fear is punctuated or balanced by catchy, memorable melodies.
Several songs on Praise a Lord blend new influences into Yves Tumor’s repertoire, as on “Meteora Blues,” which sounds like an update on Alice in Chains-style grunge rock. Everything from the track’s quiet/loud dynamic to the intro’s brooding acoustic guitars and the chugging riffs during the chorus gesture back to the grunge rock era, but without ever feeling like a rote copy. In particular, the album’s closing tracks, “Purified by the Fire” and “Ebony Eye,” bear Tumor’s distinct mark, from the former’s blown-out drum sounds and chaotic mix of strings, guitars, and bass to the latter’s exquisite yet anthemic melody.
Praise a Lord isn’t a wholly self-serious album, as Tumor deploys clever and at times silly lyrical motifs throughout in order to explore questions of self-identity and fulfillment. On “Parody,” for instance, Tumor sings to a poster image of a musician only to ask, “What makes you feel so important? Can you spell it out for us?”—giving light perhaps not only to an artist’s inner insecurities, but a need to justify themselves to a demanding audience.
Not every song on Praise a Lord, though, is as fully developed as “Parody” and “Operator.” “In Spite of War” sports one of the catchiest hooks on the entire album, but it ends abruptly after only about two-and-a-half minutes without developing much past its initial musical ideas. Similarly, the short “Interlude” functions as a comedown from the intense climax of “Meteora Blues,” but it takes up space that would have been better filled with a full song. Still, these moments further highlight Tumor’s idiosyncratic approach to experimental indie-pop.
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