Tim Kinsella-helmed collective Joan Of Arc is one of indie/art rock’s oddest success stories, a 21-year-long recording/performance project that’s produced albums of guitar duets, pretty folk/rock, aggro noise, Pro Tools-built electronic music and seemingly whatever the hell else has caught Kinsella’s interest at the moment, with virtually zero regard for aesthetic consistency or public taste. He’s Got The Whole etc. is, by these lights, a rather domesticated JOA release, not as intentionally abrasive as its predecessor, 2013’s Testimonium Songs, even if the new record also opts for clangor and hard edges over tuneful song structures. Still, if He’s Got etc. is noisy, it’s not unmelodic. It’s just that the melodies are cheekily tucked away inside the whirr and tumble of the arrangements. The lyrics, which carry those melodies clearly once you listen for them, are recognizably Kinsella—in places Dadaist (“My forehead is a tongue/My tongue is a flower/My flower is a fish”), in places endearingly goofy (“I know how the nicest guy in ISIS feels”). Much of the instrumentation is built around repeated samples, which means the strongest tracks are the ones with the most interesting and complex sonic landscapes: “This Must Be The Placenta,” “Cha Cha Cha Chakra” and “F Is For Fake” are particularly notable, as is the jagged, stuttering “Two Toothed Troll,” which provides vocalist Melina Ausikaitis with something of a star turn, a song that manages to knit together space travel, the rhetoric of photographic consent forms and the Great Chicago Fire. What the hell—it’s all material, especially for a band so consistently determined to make art out of the banal.
—Eric Waggoner
