Hi, everyone. Nothany Sleeptano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Black Dresses album, Laughing Fish.

Yes, this is the newest album from experimental alternative noise pop music duo, Black Dresses. It's their seventh, I believe, and the follow-up to 2022's Forget Your Own Face.

For the uninitiated, who are Black Dresses? What is up with their wild, untamed, lofi, indie, popery sound? And why am I even reviewing this album? Well, for one, I was excited to dive into this record because the duo is responsible for some of my favorite music over the past several years. Still, to this day, I am blown away by the songs and the production on 2020's Peaceful as Hell. It's a bold, chaotic, homespun album whose commentary on the cold and harsh and unforgiving world that we live in is something to behold. Plus, the album is way catchier than you'd expect for something that is this rough around the edges.

The duo may have an unconventional appeal, but I do think there's clearly a lot of skill and creative ideas that go into their songs and their production choices. But more importantly, I think on an emotional level, Black Dresses music represents a rawness and a vulnerability that is incredibly high. The way Ada and Debbie present their vocals on their the way they wrestle with feelings around anxiety and depression, fear of judgment. As songwriters, I think they embrace fear and love and imperfection in a way that some artists are afraid to.

So of course, I was excited at first to see that Laughing Fish is Black Dresses' biggest album so far in terms of size and scope. This thing has 22 tracks on it. But while the record does cover a lot of stylistic bases across its 77-minute run time, the more I listened to it, the more I found the process of just experiencing this record to be daunting.

This album is also said to be the duo's final LP, so they could be using this as an opportunity to just get everything out there that's leftover in the vault that's worth sharing. Blackdress has also decided to pack this record with some of their most indirect song structures and slowest burners yet, like the eerie, glitchy ambient pop intro that kicks the album off. And while Black Dresses are no strangers to a slow start, this seems maybe a bit too spaced out for something that would front one of their LPs.

Following this, we have an even more interesting departure on "Feel Something," which feels like the duo taking their usual mix of bedroom pop, noise rock, and indie freakisms and applying it to some booming beats and groovy riffs that would fit underneath a 2000s industrial rock or alternative metal song. And while I don't love it, it works way more than it should. The following "Cat Cup" carries over a lot of these same esthetics, too. But I get a lot more out of the electro style beat breakdowns and a lyrics centered around being punished for being different and veering outside of the norm. This track feels like the tortured angst of corn, but brought into a different context.

Next, "Bad Veggies" was a big single for the record, but It's a song that I just don't really find myself going back to because I think this really huge, loud, what sounds like a slowed down, pitched down clap, overtaking everything else in the mix, throws things off a bit. A lot of the record from here contains similarly surprising experiments, unlikely Sonic or stylistic combinations or Shots in the Dark, some of which pan out, some of which don't.

There's "Wounded Animal" which is a surprisingly tender ballad for Black Dresses, which goes over great, in fact. I love the way that Ada and Debbie's very lazy, chill vocal harmonies intertwine across the song. Meanwhile, Good Things Happen feels like a slight mismatch. If you could take the harsh and groovy instrumental characteristics of a Nine Inch Nails song from back in the day, but throw some summery indie electropop synths on top of it, like M83 style. The duo has definitely had sharper ideas than this one.

Then "Don't Forgive the World" feels almost like accidental mindless self-indulgence in a way, while still sounding like typical Black Dresses faire, this erratic, electronically assembled noise, rock, and pop with searing screams, unforgiving distortion, and anthemic hook, too. I like the track a lot. I actually think it could go toe to toe with many of the highlights from the duo's past records, but it makes this song stick out like a before a thumb, the fact that it is so cut and dry and so direct because there are so many other songs on the LP that just aren't.

Case in point, "The World," which in the first leg kicks off in a way where it feels like we're going to get some off-kilter but fun electropop, but a chaotic beat switch reveals that we are, in fact, not going to get a big payoff or anything like that, and we're going to detour into something much darker and stranger that fizzles out eventually. "Pure Reality" is even more winding, but somehow it's hard not to admire how wild and multifaceted this track is, especially when it starts hitting with these big and juiced up '90s style riffs and drums that are a little grunge adjacent. There are even some honking horns on top of these guitars, too. This is easily one of the most dense and arranged songs that Black Dresses have put out, because if anything really defines this album for the duo, and believe me, it's hard to find much of any direction in this tracklist, it's seemingly that they're trying to take on new challenges, approaches.

If any part of the record does have a consistent run, though, it's the midpoint, where, again, you get a good handful of tracks that bring these retro '90s alt and radio rock vibes that manages to fit really well into Black Dress's loose, flamboyant, volatile presentation, vocally and instrumentally.

This passage of the record ends with, "I Still See Everything," which brings big Nine Inch Nails vibes as well, but eventually warms up into this ray of hope in the midst of the tracklist. That sees a cloud with a silver lining. I mean, the song is very much about an ending, but simultaneously making peace with that. Obviously, this track could be a reflection on the ending of the group and an attempt to leave things on a positive note.

If there's a section of the LP that I think really could have used some work, it's the finish. I can't help but feel like this LP really could have ended with the song "Magic Eye," which covertly feels almost like a statement on the album itself, as the lyrics are very much about not being able to see past something or grasp an idea, a concept, a feeling. Instead of forcing it and driving yourself crazy over it, just intuitively dancing along to the beat without over things. And metaphorically painting this dynamic with the use of a magic eye, optical illusion, and having a hard time being able to see it and line it up with your eyes when you see past it. Lyrically, I think is a high point on the record, and I think this song is a pretty strong instrumentally, too.

Things go down from here with tracks that feel a little half-baked or are gaudy and needlessly cluttered. Yeah, "Rotation," that bass line, I mean, maybe on a Primus song, but here, then it's probably fine. I mean, I know the duo's music tends to be messy in traditionally, but even by Black Dresses usual standards, this track comes across demo quality.

The sonics of "Champion in Decay" are fried to a fault, and the closing track with its persistent whipping synthesizers, for whatever reason, just feels so unserious, and it just feels like they're trying too hard to lighten the mood for a track that's clearly going for something that is positive and cutesy. I do think the sentiment of the song is respectable, though. It's all about being and becoming a better you. And Black Dresses on this track pretty much thank their audience and those in their lives who really care about them and love them while they are their most authentic selves, which narratively, I think, brings things full circle, especially since there are so many songs up until this point that deal in feelings of insecurity and discomfort and hesitation to be yourself because we exist in a very ignorant and hateful world. It's a valid point, but it's one I wish the duo got to a bit faster as well as dug into a bit deeper.

I do appreciate the versatile and bold highlights that Black Dresses create across this very long tracklist, but I would have rather had more cohesion coming off the record at the end of the day, more consistency, too, because even though on some level with their 2022 record, while I was let down a bit because that album was so short, simultaneously, it was all killer, no filler.

Conversely, Laughing Fish has a bigger problem, the opposite problem, in that it's a total overload, and there are too many pockets across the run time of this record that just drag, which is why I'm feeling a decent to strong 6 on this one.

Anthony Fantano, Black Dresses, Forever.