...Warpaint - Warpaint

Warpaint's Second Attempt. Lectures on Variety

Beginning at the end 

Almost no review of the album "Warpaint" by the LA-based band with the same name misses to compare the album with its extolled predecessor "The Fool", from 2010. As I am unfamiliar with Warpaint's first attempt this might be a good opportunity for engaging with the music of "Warpaint" without prejudices.

Mixed reviews

I first read about "Warpaint" in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), where Alexander Müller called the music "grieving but not depressing." That is not an understatement, since the music is far to clever then to bath in a certain type of "Weltschmerz"  some bands use. Nevertheless, it seems to me that this conclusion, though true, does not get to the point of the music.



Ian Cohen from Pitchfork gave the album a rather lousy review and rated it only a 5.7 on a scale of 1-10 (Metacritic's rates the album as a 75 out of 100). Why Cohens bad decree? First of all, he finds "Warpaint" guilty of setting a "star-making roll-out" in motion, due to the massive forces involved in creating the album. But is this a reason for a bad review? However, his point is that in trying hard - maybe too hard - in creating an album as successful or even more as its predecessor, they were frittering themselves in their ample possibilities. In Cohens view, "Warpaint" does not manage to develop a coherent stream in their music, which leads to a "[...] lack[s] of hooks, grooves, or even a pulse [...]"

Lectures on Variety

In contrast to Cohen's review, I don't miss grooves or pulses in their music. They might or might not be there, this is not what I am looking for in this music.


The first song I heard of the album was "Love Is To Die", which I also recommended on Facebook. This was my first encounter with "Warpaint", and my expectation for the rest of the album where pretty high.

I was hooked in an instance by this music, especially by the strange harmonic situation when the chorus appears for the first time. It is the charm of irritation what I enjoy most in music, and this song remained for me the summit of the album. This charm should especially apply for the song "Disco//very", which is the most different to the others, but for some reason, it does not.

"Warpaint" gives us an insight into the immense variety of styles they have at their disposal, and the talent that might have unfolded at "The Fool." The problem is that almost no song on "Warpaint" manages to be exceedingly interesting, maybe due to the suffocation in possibilities. And a compilation of comparatively dull songs does not make a great album by default. Even if "Warpaint" is giving us a lecture on variety, it neither assembles to a coherent whole nor to a collection of decent songs. It is not boring or even bad crafted - it just does not live up to the high expectations.