Ohtearsofjoy - bonsoir, fucker

Ohtearsofjoy

​bonsoir, fucker
self-released; 2019

​4.1 out of 5 - TOP ALBUM 

By Matt Jensen

Ohtearsofjoy is a queer club producer and performance artist from Long Island who recently released bonsoir, fucker. The album from the artist’s mouth is “focusing on their personal struggles with familial trauma through casual homophobia & queerphobia, and the guilt of being a queer individual through familial dogma.”

The album felt unequivocally contemporary even though music seems to becoming more and more trendless due to the fact that it is coming out of every orifice of the Internet at a faster and faster rate. There is a fairly eclectic mix of music on this album. It ranges from ballads to metallic dance romps and some more in between.

The first song is entitled “There's a Unique Smell in the Pigpen.” There is a clear dichotomy to the song. It starts with lone isolated piano and mutates into a deep beat that implements white noise, sub bass hits and more into an inventive collage of sounds. The lyrics are simultaneously dark, striking and ambiguous. There were lines like “What the fuck you expect? Repeat my grievance for audit / Things be turning exotic / So they shove me back in the closet” which are just as poetic as they are poignant.

“Renoir” is a substantial number. The production feels somewhere between Sophie and Nine Inch Nails. It’s catchy in its own unique way and fills up its time length to the brim with unique sounds and transitions. After the brief “(Piano Interlude) >”  we have “Dieudieudieu” which is really picking up the energy. The beats here are hypnotic with the lyrics often feeling like cathartic yet poetic journal entries.

“Adore / Beautiful Boy (feat. Glencove)” is perhaps the highlight and definitely one of the more emotionally resonant songs. It’s a ballad at its heart but goes into plenty of places that would be off limits to a standard pop music. It’s the piano ballad on American Idol that you might watch if it was directed by David Lynch.

“Ouilleouilleouilleouille!!” is a late night thumper that might sound best in the early hours of the morning while the club is still open while “The Day Lawnguyland Saw Me Blossom” has some R&B flavor to it. The energy picks up once more with “Renoir (Copycat)” before the closer “Bear.” “Bear” is the emotional intense centerpiece in a way and also experimental. It’s similar to the opener in that there is a dichotomy between a more busy section and solo piano.

I’ve heard previous releases from this artist but bonsoir, fucker feels like where he was trying to get to. This is the type of release which feels like an artist arrives and in the most important way. It may not arrive financially or commercially (but it could). The thing that is most important is that the artist is coming into their own creatively which is what seems to be happening with this record. Highly recommended.

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