It All Comes Down to This

It All Comes Down to This was A Certain Ratios third proper album in a five-year span. Counting the concurrent EPs, live-in-studio LP, and remixes, the Mancunians were at least as prolific during that period as they were in the post-punk era. Ever willing to change things up, Jez Kerr, Donald Johnson, and Martin Moscrop chose to pare down their sound with producer Dan Carey (Fontaines D.C., Wet Leg, Squid, etc.), who hit it off with the trio when they met at the 2021 Wide Awake Festival. Carey turned in a vibrating remix of ACR:EPA track "Down and Dirty," the apex of that years Loco Remezclada, and then he and ACR fulfilled plans to work together on new material. Like 2022s 1982, It All Comes Down to This keeps it snappy in terms of songcraft with ten tightly composed tunes. However, there are almost no supplemental players, limited to one appearance from trumpeter Jamie Beardmore and some support on handclaps. By no means simply bashed out, the songs are dressed with extra layers of percussion and percolating electronic FX, and theres even an acid line in the mix. Most saliently, the self-contained method leaves Kerr and Johnson to handle all the vocals. This fosters a consistently cool and casual air to everything, though there is plenty of serious lyrical matter about unease, doubt, mortality, and defiance, and a sense of modern dread hangs over much of it. The first half verges on sluggish -- the call to "Release the pressure -- big, big fun" comes across as unenthusiastic, maybe even sarcastic -- but most of the songs do have an alluring quality. Theres considerably more verve and buoyancy to the second half, starting with "God Knows," one of the sweetest and most pop-oriented songs ACR have made, and continuing with the fluid disco-funk of "Out from Order" and the comparatively lean and slashing "Where You Coming From." One unexpected delight is "Estate Kings," where Johnson takes the mike to fondly look back with a monologue tucked perfectly inside a heady, slow-motion groove built with a melodic Kerr bassline and accented by Moscrops familiar echoed trumpet. ~ Andy Kellman