Alan Vega
Insurrection
IN THE RED
Since Suicide was never enough for Alan Vega, the primal vocalist and poet took his grunts, growls, and societal rants and moved from that duo’s brand of scabby, avant-punk soundscapes to solo efforts that touched on rockabilly, minimalism, and a surprisingly slick sort of industrialized new wave on 1983’s Saturn Strip. Death didn’t stop Vega’s flow, either. Since his passing in 2016, he’s continued onward with previously lost, not-fully-realized projects as strong as any of his lifetime’s releases with 2017’s IT, 2021’s Mutator, and the newly compiled Insurrection.
Co-produced by his wife, muse, and vault keeper Liz Lamere with his longtime collaborator Jared Artaud, Insurrection finds the conscious-streaming and shockingly melancholy Vega deep at (un)rest, whisking and whispering his way, menacingly, through the insistent turbulence of “Cyanide Soul” and the roiling experimentalism of “Sewer,” gear-grinding rhythm and, every so often, mesmerizing sonic passages that loll and leap gently while Vega’s voice attacks the listener from all sides. Lyrically, Vega’s takes on the mess of moral decay are claustrophobic and crammed tight with the prescience of racism, fascism, and more than a few other -isms currently at work in the worrisome wonton world depicted in “Genocide” and “Chains.”
And yet on “Fireballer Spirit” and “Mercy,” there’s a sense of optimism and the sound of psychic songbirds amidst the morass, the crack in the darkness where light pours through that Leonard Cohen spoke of so eloquently. With Insurrection this great, here’s hoping alchemists Lamere and Artaud keep fishing through Vega’s archives for gold.
