If their 2011 album ‘Blown Realms and Stalled Explosions’ nudged hard at the boundaries between experimental, spoken word and avant-garde / noise, ‘The Rightful Pivot’ does nothing to cement Enablers’ position in any one bracket. This, of course, is a good thing. Screw convention and pigeonholing! Enablers don’t sound like anyone else, and that’s what makes them great.
They come in from all angles on the eight tracks contained here: semi-ambient prog provides the sonic setting for some gently mumbled musings, while elsewhere, things get fiery and uncomfortable.
The opening track, ‘Went Right’ weaves a challenging narrative over a woozy dark-edged rock backdrop. ‘What the fuck?’ Pete Simonelli cries out, gruffly. It’s a fearful moment. You feel the panic, the anxiety. They’re masters of mood.
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Doodling post-rock meanderings and chiming guitars provide a subtle build at the start of the album’s centrepiece, the 10-minute ‘Look’, eventually reaching a powerful climax, while ‘Good Shit’ crackles and smoulders its way through a mellowed-out avant-jazz trip.
‘West Virginia’ is one of the album’s noisier tracks, and sends shivers down the spin as it bursts into jolts of noise that land somewhere between Shellac and Truman’s Water, half Fugazi, half beat poetry slam.
It doesn’t get cooler than this.
Enablers - The Rightful Pivot Online
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