Subtle

Subtle is the four-dimensional, mostly physical embodiment of our best hopes for great music. They exist decidedly on the fringe of the modern body of song, yet pump bare-handed the still-beating heart of that bloated beast. They are an amalgam of art gallery and visceral performance, raw outpouring and studied execution, wild fantasy and cold-gutted reality. With one foot in Oakland, and another in the cosmos, Subtle concoct music like you’ve never heard. Consider the rhythms, cadences and collagist tendencies of hip-hop bounded on all side by the warm familiarity of rock (post- or otherwise) channelling bop’s considerable ear for freedom and complexity, all glazed over with thin layer of electronic frost. (No amount of genre name-calling would breathe wide enough to encompass what they do.) Subtle is a band of six men—each with a wide-cast net of good art and associations; each with a veritable arsenal of devices with which to wage pitched battle against all things drab and unimaginative—together recording, playing, improvising and hoping their way to the far side of song.

For Hero:For Fool a rare thing worthy not just of hype, but of trust. Let it pull you into its uniquely skewed universe, and your senses will gladly adjust themselves to take it in in turn. The electro Dada stomp of “A Tale of Apes I” announces the album as the curtain literally opens on Hour Hero Yes. He’s onstage giving the insatiable crowd what they want: a heaping helping of stagerap machismo. Adam narrates in his most swinging spit-spun verses while the band blends organic, synthetic, electric and acoustic with nary an audible stitch. The song’s sequel (“A Tale of Apes II”) depicts two art guerrillas hard at work creating something so much bigger than the tiny basement they’re in to a dreamy soundscape of guitar acoustics and burbling static, heartbeat bass pumps and celestial washes of synth. On “Midas Gutz” Adam cycles through styles like a one-man hip-hop crew (gruff western slur- slang, a deep-voiced exaggerated baritone, his trademark polyrhythmic falsetto, cadence-heavy spoken word and candy-throated croon) as he illustrates a ludicrous scene: rappers competing to find out who has the grandest guts by disembowelling themselves on a table and measuring the length of their intestines. “The Mercury Craze” makes itself an apt single as the band turns their collective discerning ear toward stacking melodies over a bouncing soundtrack that would’ve heralded the coming of Gnarls Barkley had it been released when it was recorded. And Dax’s voice triumphantly carries the chorus.

Throughout For Hero:For Fool, Subtle effortlessly shift moods and sounds, weaving individual songs with the utmost care, but upholding the art of composition all the while (see the cello and skittering drum-based “Bed to the Bills” and the jangly Dax-borne epic “The Ends,” both of which are standalone works of beauty and vital pieces of the aural/lyrical puzzle). It’s the culmination of each member’s fearless career in music thus far, of their five years spent jamming together, of their one heartbreaking and blissful year that’s felt like ten. Adam’s continual obsessions—the neuroses and shadowy characters that have populated his songs for years—congeal here into a fantastical vision. You need not be a cradle to grave devotee to partake, to crawl inside of the eggshell and poke at the yolk. You only need to be a dreamer yourself. This September, Subtle will take to the road again, where onstage For Hero:For Fool will come alive in a travelling storm of props and projection, band theatrics and virtuosic performance as worthy of playhouses as concert halls as rock and roll dives.