Scarred for Life＜Clear Vinyl＞

Songwriter, producer, and Crack Cloud and N0V3L member Bryce Cloghesy shared his first album under the name Military Genius with 2020s Deep Web. That record was a grim but captivating collection of dark, dubby soundscapes, psychedelic minimal synthwave, and other rough-edged hymns of the end times. Cloghesy takes his boundless ambition in different directions entirely on Scarred for Life, the second full-length release from Military Genius. While the album still maintains the bleak, scorched-earth essence of the project, the songs branch out into soft-focus ambient pop, acid jazz grooves, melancholic orchestration, and a variety of other new approaches. Every track is a bit different from the rest, though on the whole the entire album is cleaner and more complexly arranged than anything on Deep Web. Cloghesy explores the unlikely combination of late-90s R&B production and gothic atmospherics on "Window to the Soul," with deep sub-bass synths, prominent programmed percussion, and synth melodies straight out of the Cures Disintegration. He takes the song somewhere even weirder by keeping a noodly guitar lead going the entire time, but somehow the disparate elements never get too much in each others way. "Forlorn Dub" doesnt just add echo to a rock-based tune but actually finds Cloghesy reshaping a rocksteady reggae rhythm into something more wounded and crooning. The somber piano and acoustic guitar of "Walk the Earth" and uneasy pulsation of "Darkest Hour" both evoke a bit of Talk Talks open-sky yearning, while "Twisted Root" loops an organic hip-hop bassline as its anchoring element, and the moody saxophone and thick groove of "This Prison" conjure images of late-night after-hours bars. At the center of all these different ideas and mishmashed styles is Cloghesys patient, controlled voice. His understated vocals glue together all of the different experiments that play out across Scarred for Life, grounding outlandish songs that might falter with a different vocalist on the mic, and serving as a focal point for the more subtle selections. Its an interesting record thats not afraid to reach out in lots of different directions. Even though not all of these directions intersect comfortably, Cloghesys creative vision keeps the album not just on the rails as it goes over some bumpy terrain, but creatively locked-in and engaging through even its strangest spots. ~ Fred Thomas