Tim Melina Theo Bobby

Sometime following the release of their gorgeous 2018 album 1984, long-running Chicago art rock experimentalists Joan of Arc decided to call it a day. The band formed in 1995 around the impassioned vocals, obtuse thinking, and creatively limitless songwriting of former Capn Jazz member Tim Kinsella, and for the next many years, Kinsella and a rotating cast of players stretched the conceptual boundaries of what Joan of Arc was on over a dozen albums. After making the decision to end the group, the most recently active lineup entered the studio, knowing that what they were recording would be the last statement from a band who had spent two-and-a-half decades creating a sound that was both wildly specific and somehow boundless. In true Joan of Arc fashion, final album Tim Melina Theo Bobby (the first names of the players who made the music) sees the group taking their sound in a new direction, even on the way out the door. The lovely and meditative opening track Destiny Revision calls on the same evenly paced acoustic guitars mingling with understated electronics that the band have been exploring since their 1997 debut, A Portable Model Of.... After this somewhat self-referential introduction, however, the gears switch completely. Something Kind is an amalgam of moody vocals from Melina Ausikaitis, bashing distorted drums, and clashes of dissonant guitar lines. Ausikaitis also shines on Feedback 3/4, a glossy piece of cinematic synth pop not quite like anything the band have produced before. Though Joan of Arc have always incorporated electronics into their sound, its usually in a more subdued way than the bold synths and cracking electronic drum sounds of Tim Melina Theo Bobby. Many songs are led by synth lines, and the curious instrumental track Land Surveyor has more in common with the moon-walking electro of early-2000s Mouse on Mars than the organic electronics-tinged rock of the bands last few albums. Final track Upside Down Bottomless Pit has a similar blend of enhanced digital dabbling and Kinsellas patented songwriting, offering the kind of cerebral expression of beauty and despair hes dealt in since the group began. The song ends abruptly, feeling stilted and knowingly incomplete. Its a perfect ending note for a band whose unique sonic language relied on equal and interconnected shares of joy and confusion. ~ Fred Thomas