Few bands are as prolific as Boris. The Japanese trio has done everything from shoegaze to synthpop to drone to thrash metal to harsh noise to garage rock to punk to hardcore to post rock to rockabilly (probably—I’m not actually sure if they’ve done any rockabilly, but probably). The sheer mass and diversity of their output makes for some great moments, but it makes it very difficult to call any of their albums essential.
Sure, there are some legendary mile markers in their discography: most people point to Pink, I point to Noise. But for the most part, while their consistently enjoyable and impressive as a whole, most of the individual albums aren’t very distinctive from one another.
To that point, W is their twenty-seventh album—a number that doesn’t include their seemingly endless list of collaborative works. However, W feels unique enough even among Boris’s discography that it warranted adding it to my collection.
To be fair, W doesn’t exactly have any surprises on it. I’m actually not sure Boris could release anything that would surprise me at this point. These are familiar sounds in the Boris catalog: the gooey guitars, the bubbling atmospheres, the occasional forays into heavy metal… But they’ve never sounded quite this cohesive before.
By and large, Boris albums feel like sonic grab bags, arranged more by the time the songs were written than any sort of mood or theme. And while there are certainly some whiplashy moments here—most notably the muscular riff fest “The Fallen” which sits between the barely-there “Invitation” and the fragile shoegaze joy of “Beyond Good and Evil“—but these moments feel more intentional than similar juxtapositions in the past, the best of which felt more like happy accidents than compositional decisions.
But those brief, minor incongruencies aside, the sonic palette of this record feels the more unified than any Boris album in a long time (the single-song album Feedbacker not withstanding). There’s an identifiable sonic center to this record—which isn’t something you can say about their output usually. Around eighty percent of the record is built on guitars warped into massive waves of liquid noise, Wata’s voice delivering Japanese lyrics with a preciousness that would be kawaii with different accompaniment. The drums play gently through most of the record, taking their cues more from Wata’s near-whispered vocals than the shapeshifting guitar noise. These sorts of aural contrasts aren’t uncommon among shoegaze or dream pop—especially when Boris dabbles with them—but it feels closer to Cocteau Twins‘ gossamer sweetness than My Bloody Valentine‘s noise-induced trance. Though listener beware: as beautiful as the record is, it is a bizarre record. While listening to it last night with my wife in the room, I jokingly asked her, “is this the worst album you’ve ever heard?” (For the record, she said she thought it sounded cute, due to the vocals).
“I Want to Go to the Side Where You Can Touch…” opens the record with gusts of guitar so airy it’s hard to imagine it’s being played by an instrument at all. The song slowly builds with oscillating feedback that should sound abrasive, but it somehow feels as gentle as Tawa’s vocal delivery. “Icelina” stacks layers of octave effects and synths to create the most earnest dream pop Boris has ever made. “Drowning By Numbers” is practically immediate: the atmosphere turns a shade darker and the rhythm section plays an industrial groove beneath the tape loops, guitar noise, and synths. The closing* song “You Will Know (Ohayo Version)” is positively stunning, pulling together the sonic elements of the tracks before it for a nine-and-a-half-minute closer that ties every loose thread together like it was a narrative.
Per the band, the album is meant as a companion piece to 2020’s NO, perhaps their most focused piece of harsh, aggressive metal ever, combining to create the title “NOW.” But W needs no context to be captivating. Its lyrics require no translation to speak clearly. It is as understated and gorgeous a statement as Boris has ever made. And twenty-seven records in, that’s quite the accomplishment.
*the final track is a minute of mile-away guitar that barely registers your attention