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Growing up, I mostly watched ’90s blaxploitation horror films with some distance, sometimes spreading my fingers to provide visual context for the jarring sound. The films—Def by Temptation (1990), Candyman (1992), Tales from the Hood (1995)—were not all that different in approach from contemporary blaxploitation horror films like Get Out, in that they all used the genre as a vehicle to explore a range of issues affecting black people. They drew on the oral traditions of black folklore, where at the conclusion of a story involving some atrocity, you come away with a lesson or moral. In Def by Temptation, for example, a succubus played by Cynthia Bond stalks womanizing black men. Tales from the Hood is made up of four short stories, each narrated by a funeral director who continues to run a drug ring, and each offering insight into police brutality, domestic violence, gangs, and racism. These films didn’t rely entirely on the cyclical formula of tension and violence used by the more famous horror films of the era. There were certainly moments that were genuinely scary, especially if you were a kid who was often wary of the world, as I was. But the threat was delivered with intent—the hope that the fear the film instilled could potentially help you survive. In Tales, the hidden monster wasn’t a masked villain with a machete; it was a cop, or someone from your neighborhood. You might leave a film like this with fear bottled up in a different way, until you learned to be scary enough, or impenetrable enough, to ward off earthly evil.
In the press releases for Bartees Strange’s third studio album, Horror, the musician shares how he watched horror films as a child to strengthen himself, to emotionally prepare himself for the outside world, treating it as a kind of therapy, immersing himself in the harsh and unpredictable collection of atrocities that make up the world. Sonically, Strange’s music has always been composed of many different elements that seem to be in conflict, but somehow work together harmoniously – each element is its own universe, but also completely dependent on the others. Before his acclaimed 2020 debut, Live Forever, which was a fusion of indie rock, pop punk, and hip-hop, Strange was a member of the Brooklyn post-hardcore band Stay Inside. He has a voice that can oscillate between tender intimacy and anguished howl, and he creates choruses that are often as grandiose as the choruses of early 2000s emo – captivating sonic events. His lyrics convey internalized persecutions—and pleasures—as a matter of course, as in his 2017 song “Going Going,” which includes the line “The women who loved me/whipped me with whips.” It’s a compact lyric with a whole world inside it, and it’s been stuck in my head since I first heard it years ago.
Strange’s ability to quickly get intuitive is what makes Horror such a compelling project. The album’s black-and-red visual motif is lifted from a 2000s horror movie poster (I mean that as a compliment), but the songs themselves are a series of ruminations on complex, all-consuming anxieties. Strange is a black, queer man who spent his formative years as an Army brat in rural America, which brings its own set of anxieties to his identity. Horror deconstructs that higher-level fear and uncovers a series of more personal concerns—fear of loneliness, fear of isolation, fear of not being a good friend, fear of not being loved or understood.
Jack Antonoff helped produce the album, which was recorded primarily in Strange's home studio. Strange's musical influences span seventies pop and soul, nineties and 2000s sounds, and various eras of hip-hop; on Horror, he mixes and fuses these genres into unique forms. Opener “Too Much” features soulful crooning accompanied by swooping guitar notes that would sound equally at home on a nineties R&B record or a twenty-first-century rock album; then, midway through the song, the loud sounds fade away and, over sparse drums, Strange launches straight into a rap verse that explodes into a short guitar solo. It's a surprisingly frenetic clash that sets the tone for the rest of the album.
I once had a mentor who argued that there are two kinds of poets: those who value beauty over truth, and those who seek truth and believe that some beauty might emerge in the process. If I had to use that imperfect binary to analyze Strange, at least on “Horror,” I’d say he falls into the latter category. “Baltimore,” a modest acoustic ode, is a patient exploration of belonging, or lack thereof, starting with the first line: “When I think of the places I could live / I wonder if anyone’s good enough to raise some black kids.” “Doomsday Buttercup” is a song driven by a light
Sourse: newyorker.com
