Ulrika Spacek
EXPO
FULL TIME HOBBY
There are only so many variants of genre hyphenations available until that approach becomes useless in describing a particular style of music. Most music just reminds us of other, older music, and artists generally stick to those roots because nostalgia seems to feed the craving for quote-unquote simpler times that may feel out of reach today. For London-via-Berlin indie-rock rogues Ulrika Spacek, the topic of genre is sort of like politics: one only brings it up in an argument with the expectation that it will result in a heavy object being heaved into one’s immediate vicinity. The term “experimental” is a bit unconvincing for the band due to their sonic resemblance to established lanes of post-punk and psych-rock, while their write-songs-as-though-no-one-will-listen mentality slots them in with more avant-garde crowds.
The UK outfit’s latest album EXPO warps fuzzy guitars with vibrant electronics and stormy atmospherics to shatter illusions of reality reflecting off shiny screens. Their fourth LP takes the band’s previous psychedelic wanderings into more abstract territory, offering an unflinching critique of hyperindividualism and performative identity in an era of heightened anxiety. Unlike previous Spacek albums that searched within to find meaning, EXPO seeks to paint a painfully honest portrait of modern fracture and isolation with songs that feel skeptical about our collective future. The compositions themselves are layered with a certain dreaminess, as if autonomously reacting to the band’s own novel experimentation.
Lead single “Build a Box Then Break It” revolves around an indictment of a meaningless world (“There’s no point in stupid dreaming / There’s no meaning in a diamond ring”) that can only be described as brutalist, Pollockian, and eerily intoxicating. Second single “Square Root of None” ricochets hypnotizing melodies, while computerized fractals dance off meandering guitars on final single “Picto.” The dark and cinematic atmospheres of “I Could Just Do It” propel existential inertia into electronic ennui that hints at warped reflections of realism while bringing to mind the moody early works of Massive Attack, Radiohead, and Blonde Redhead. “Our music has always been a collage,” the band shared ahead of the album’s release, evoking that prickly conversation of genre and experimentation.
EXPO does seem to patch the fabric of several different genres together, however the most experimental quality of the album is its message. As influenced by darker textures as they are the darkening world they create within, Ulrika Spacek fortify their instrumentation with a DIY sample bank to communicate, somewhat ironically, the importance of authenticity in a dislocated world. They write something of an antithesis to nostalgia while instrumentally bringing in glimpses of memory evoked by other artists. To that end, the album braves its own unabashed self-awareness as “Incomplete Symphony” closes the record with a white flag: “No new lens, it’s lookalike / It’s AWOL, the spine it seems / And for now, I’m done for tonight.” As a work of meta-reflection, there certainly is some originality here.
