Boris
Smile
Southern Lord
Turn it upside down
While these prolific Japanese woofer-wreckers will always be remembered for the post-Earth dronerumble of ’90s avalanches like Absolutego and Amplifier Worship, Boris get a higher profile every year thanks to their new role as super-hip, subatomic, molten-magma Rock Band. Heavy Rocks and 2003’s Akama No Uta revealed a barking, distorted Motörhead motor, which Boris quickly suffocated with blissful pastures on their next records: If 2005’s hipster-sanctioned Pink reinvented the band as hazy, dream-metal heartgazers, last year’s Rainbow just had them staring directly into the sun.
Smile is a sugary, bright orange combination of all of their recent mood swings: comforting dreampop, summery melodies and corrosive stoner metal—if the title of first track “Flower Sun Rain” doesn’t say it all, we don’t know what could. (Yeah, it’s a cover of ’70s Japanese rockers PYG, but it’s still fitting.) This is definitely one of their more “rock” records (“BUZZ-IN” doesn’t actually feature Buzz Osborne, but might as well) and assuredly their most pop (there’s a Golden Earring jumpoff called “Laser Beam,” for fuck’s sake), but features all their best sounds from their more textural records: noise-goo, sunburn drone, distorted everything. Parts of “My Neighbor Satan” even touch on their harsh, blown-out psychnoize experiments with Keiji Haino—even more stunning since it’s bookended between choruses that sound like Adore-era Smashing Pumpkins! And for their encore, a 20-minute sunny psych daydream accompanied by—what?—SunnO))) psycho night-terror Stephen O’Malley? It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why their least focused record is also their best in years. —Christopher R. Weingarten
