‘A Man Alive’: Dead on Arrival

“A Man Alive” is a pleasant enough album to listen to disinterestedly. Holding it to the standard of a listener with rapt attention, it crumbles under its wobbling bass lines. The surprisingly directionless effort is Thao & The Get Down Stay Down’s sixth album. For better or worse, the band operates in the indefinable space between folk rock and halfhearted experimental hip-hop. Their previous effort, “We the Common,” was a meditation on the common human experience with the occasional turn towards liberal political populism (if that sounds broad, it is because the topicality of their previous work is broad). While lacking in cohesive musical vision, both in lyrics and sound, “We the Common” still felt fun. “A Man Alive” has lost much of this vibrancy.

There is a disconnect between what the album was intended to be and what it is. In a press release, Thao Nguyen, the frontwoman of Thao & The Get Down Stay Down, said “[The album is] a document of my life in conjunction with [my dad’s], even though we’ve always been leading our lives away from each other.” Yet, without this piece of information, the album reads like the divulgence of emotions towards spurned lovers and ejaculations of various maxims. Some of these pieces are successful, most are not—the complete dissonance between intent and product begins to reveal a larger trend of impotent eloquence.

Thao Nguyen’s voice—the only noticeable voice through the entirety of the album—is wearing. Not in a way that grows loveable after a while; rather, in a way that desperately necessitates an intermission, an interlude or at least a feature. In isolation each song can be, in the right circumstance, enjoyable, but her unending desire for vocal modulation creates an insufferable presence at the center of the album. Her voice is not explicitly unpleasant; she derives a depth of tenderness from it on “Nobody Dies” and “Millionaire.” However, on the vast majority of songs, she obscures her talent through irritating singing. This is no more noticeable than in the opening moments of “Departure,” where she warbles, “Here is a memory. Learn to save it.” Each word carries with it a new note, and each new note feels like an unsettling refusal to remain on the tone. It sounds as if she is singing a badly written duet, with the singers singing the same song two semitones apart. This is such a shame; lyrically, “Departure” is a fascinating meditation on a human understanding of death. She goes on to say, “We are not born for departure. But we do learn to take it.” There is a fantastic and complex interplay between the nature of death and memory occurring here. Yet, the occasional brilliance of her lyrics is lost with her refusal to elucidate them comprehensibly and pleasantly.

The problems of “A Man Alive” certainly do not start and end with Nguyen. The album’s refusal to commit to one definable musical sphere could have created an ethereal, unendingly interesting musical statement. However, when Thao & The Get Down Stay Down cycle through these musical genres, they fail to truly commit to any of the most compelling facets of these genres. “Meticulous Bird” can only be called hip-hop because her verses are sung in a monotone voice and she attempts to use a close rhyme scheme. She unfortunately raps, “I resent the invention, listen, listen, pay attention,” repeating “listen,” for no reason outside of fitting her lyrics to the beat. As a group, the band seem woefully underprepared to fill these songs with the vibrancy of the genres from which they borrow. Precisely because of this, despite the outward appearance of musical diversity, the entirety of the album feels unendingly self-plagiaristic of previous work.

With this said, “A Man Alive” has moments of true empathetic brilliance. “Astonished Man” is a quarter of a great song, opening with a fantastic bass line that moves and twists with undeniable vitality, melding with and elevating Nguyen’s voice. Fifty-five seconds into the song, the magic created by this marriage is gone; Nguyen’s voice has reverted to unpleasant and the rest of the sound is oversaturated. Most of these twelve tracks have these moments of brilliance. Only a few, “Nobody Dies” and “Endless Love” in particular, are able to sustain it over the whole span of four minutes. “Millionaire,” the only song that is able to successfully convey the premise of the album, is sung with such tenderness that it demands empathy from the listener: “Shatter all you will not carry. Smash what you won’t bear. Oh daddy I’ve broken into a million pieces. That makes you a millionaire.” If only the promise of this one song was carried throughout the rest of the album. Instead, we are left with broken pieces, fragments of talent.