About

Monument is a fitting title for the third album by Belarusian trio Molchat Doma. Indeed, it stands as a monument to everything they’ve achieved in their short time as a band, from whispered-about unknowns, to enigmatic underground icons, to legitimate viral sensations with hundreds of thousands of TikTok videos using their music. Monument sees them return as conquering heroes, expanding on the minimalist greatness of S Krysh Nashikh Domov and Etazhi to fully realize a more maximalist vision of their crystalline post-punk sound.

Written and recorded while the band was quarantined in their hometown of Minsk during the COVID-19 pandemic, Monument is a conscious step up in songwriting and fidelity, and it reveals a band preternaturally comfortable in its own skin. Whether playing to the dancefloor, as they do on the synthpop anthem “Discoteque,” or working more introspectively on pre-pandemic live favorites “Otveta Net” and “Ne Smeshno,” Molchat Doma are in complete control. Their greatest strength has always been their songwriting, and they’ve only gotten better.  — (via Label)

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Molchat Doma’s newest and third album Monument doesn’t pander to their broadened audience with English-language lyrics or “Судно” copies. Instead, it brings the ’80s gothic dream the band first envisioned on 2017’s understated С Крыш Наших Домов to an anxious, glossy head. The performances sound more confident, the music less muddy. Singer Egor Shkutko’s grumbly baritone is better controlled, packing the intensity of a Russian Ian Curtis. There’s even a bit of maximalist sparkle coming off “Дискотека / Discoteque,” where an eager flurry of keyboard accompanies Shkutko as he sings about dancing fervently at a house party. It’s a bright pop sentiment on a song that sounds like the Cure, or like-minded Russian new wave messengers Buerak, and its earnestness makes for a welcome break from the band’s usual chilliness.

But Molchat Doma does despondency well, even with song titles as amusingly explicit as “Ленинградский Блюз / Leningradskiy Blues,” a tinny, sleepy track detailing a doomed love that spans centuries. Shkutko often fixates on ghost stories like these, pleading with someone he has wronged to let him drown peacefully in “Утонуть / Utonut’,” or mythologizing a lover as he reconciles with his own mistakes on “Звезды / Zvezdy.” TikTok has equated Molchat Doma with a more debonair darkness; Monuments makes their solemn intensity clear.

Molchat Doma’s music is so mystically self-possessed that it’s hard not to wish you were part of the magic, too. — (via Pitchfork)

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Label: Sacred Bones Records
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Limited Edition, Blue
Released: 2020
Genre: Electronic, Rock
Style: Synthwave, Post-Punk

File under: Electronic // Synthesiser
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