Boris
Attention Please/Heavy Rocks
Sargent House
The Japanese trio Boris have been plenty busy of late. In addition to a double vinyl album earlier in the year, there's also a collaborative effort with Merzbow due out soon and two new releases that have just dropped. On Attention Please and Heavy Rocks, their 16th and 17th albums, the group are clearly exploring different ends of the musical spectrum, with varied results.
Attention Please is the real shocker. For the first time in the group's two-decade career, Wata, the female guitarist, handles all vocal duties. It's also the group's poppiest album by a mile. The bass-heavy rumble crush so characteristic of the group's earlier releases has been replaced by introspective and haunting cooing on the lumbering opening title track, and that continues much of the way through the 10 songs.
Though the track Aileron is on both albums, the two versions couldn't be more different. Quiet and acoustic on Attention Please, it gets the full, sprawling brutal guitar treatment on Heavy Rocks. Attention may be a fine diversion, but like its title implies, Heavy Rocks is heavy and rocks in an epic kind of way. There's nobody else like Boris and here they amply show why.
