Shortparis release album after band leader dies

Records that claim the status of musical heritage, it is quite difficult to perceive as ordinary albums. Songs that come out after the death of the person who wrote and performed them, instantly overgrown with meanings that may not have been put into them. The general context seems to dictate its rules and there is no escape from it.

In almost every track from the Iliad, the theme of death is felt willy-nilly. It manifests itself in the first song "Sing with me" from the opening line "The dead will not stand in a row" and reaches the top in the final track "Farewell". “Whom they do not remember, they will not ask, Flowers are taken out of the old rooms,” Komyagin brings out under the piano, and it sounds like a funeral service.

In the intention of the band members to give the release a memorial character, there is unconditional logic. These songs have become a memory of Nikolai Komyagin, and it so happened that they sound sad to the point of despair. However, it would be wrong to call this album only a memorial for the deceased musician. In the “Iliad” much more ideas and moods, however, they are not fun at all.

Shortparis albums have always been like boxes of surprises, which is more normal for a band that doesn't have answers to questions like "What style do you play?" and "What are your songs about?" Early in their careers, musicians chose between folk and jazz, and they ended up using both. And with the album “So steel was tempered” (2019), which became a really loud statement of the group, fans of specifics became quite difficult.

Shortparis was in many respects rightly called the successors of Sergei Kuryokhin and his Pop-Mechanics. Compared with industrial icons Einsturzende Neubauten and many others, but always recognized that Shortparis managed to come up with something very different under different influences, and to give an accurate description of their style is not possible.

On all of their releases, Shortparis blended constructive and deconstructive, often replacing one with the other. But if earlier they packed their improvisations in a mixture of techno scraps and punk debris, surprisingly turning it all into some absurdist cabaret, then the Iliad is a much more conservative album in sound.

Melodies are sometimes referred to the old stage, wind, accordion, piano appeared in the arsenal of instruments, and some vocal parts acquired a completely new volume thanks to the choir. All this gives some solemnity to everything that is happening, but very quickly it becomes clear that the musical festival is unfolding at the grave with dead hopes and expectations.

“They said, ‘We were going the wrong way.’” But we didn't read it, the band's frontman reports on the title track "The Iliad." There is disappointment in almost every song. The most illustrative in this respect is the track “Russian longing or the song of a weakling”, where the contemplation of the horror that is happening around, and the feeling of complete inability to resist this, once again add up to a hopeless local metaphysics.

“Do you remember the tears rolling from your eyes the first time you shut up?” This line from the song "The Nail" can reflect a variety of emotions, but for some reason now it is difficult to find romance in it, in contrast to shame for everything not said in time and on the case. There are many such bitter confessions in the Iliad. And it is this bitterness that gives the overall memorial theme of the album a special meaning. Death here is not physical, but rather moral. And if the dead no longer feel anything, the living, in the souls of which every day something dies, quickly lose faith in themselves. Which, however, does not prevent them from dancing, for example, to "Again". There is great power in rhythm. It is very invigorating to the body, although it is unlikely to heal the soul.