No single Wolf Eyes record should be viewed as a complete representation of the band, whose discography sprawls across 17 years and dozens of vanity labels all over the world. It’s tempting, however, to view I Am A Problem: Mind In Pieces, as a kind of circuit being closed, not in the least because it comes to us via Jack White’s vanity-label-on-steroids Third Man Records. It’s as though the years and years of searing, iconoclastic noise have slowly dissipated to reveal the band’s brutalist proto-rock impulses, which are laid bare like never before.
There’s a cohesiveness to the songwriting approach across this album’s six tracks: incantatory vocals, droning klaxon-esque guitar, death-processional floor tom thumps and swirling banks of electronic noise, all performed with masterful attention to dynamics and tonality. At the same time, there’s relative lack of confrontational left turns and endurance-testing meltdowns, which might divide long-time fans over whether this is Wolf Eyes’ most boring album or their most “mature.”
Top track: T.O.D.D.
