Since introducing his Tobacco alias in 2008 in the shadow of his more cosmically inclined electro-psych act, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Thomas Fec has been engaged in a prolonged game of, as a track from his debut record put it, “Gross Majick,” reveling in the tension between technical precision and human deviancy. Like his signature melting logo, Tobacco’s synth-funk pastiches are positively dripping with blood, sweat, spit, and other bodily fluids; even when you can’t tell what his corroded voice is saying half the time, his lecherous delivery—sounding like some heavy-breathing prank caller—broadcasts his intentions loud and clear. And on his fifth Tobacco album, Fec doubles down on both the most alluring and unsettling aspects of the project.
Hot, Wet, & Sassy arrives four years after the previous Tobacco album, Sweatbox Dynasty, though Fec’s gear settings were seemingly left untouched in the interim. He continues to build tracks from his toolkit of gritty beats, fuzz-slathered synths, and chiming glockenspiel-like refrains that periodically cut through the crud. But if Tobacco’s past records bore the blurry patina of a VHS cassette that’s been languishing for decades in a milkcrate, Hot, Wet, & Sassy is more like a first-gen DVD, bringing a sharper focus to his melodies while rendering his synth grotesqueries in a more horrifying fidelity. And if Fec’s voice sounds as haunted and horny as ever, Hot, Wet, & Sassy ultimately expands Tobacco’s emotional vocabulary from creepy all the way to weepy.
The opening “Centaur Skin” serves as the showroom model for the reformulated Tobacco. Though its Moroderized Knight Rider pulse reaffirms Fec’s love for ’80s flash ‘n’ trash, Fec issues his ominous admissions—“I’m a bad friend/I got bad ideas/But always sincere”—with a sympathy-for-the-devil pathos. Throughout Hot, Wet, & Sassy, Fec takes delight in toying with your perception, treating each song as a Rorschach test to diagnose your state of mind: “Headless to Headless” alternates between a chainsawed buzz and Kraftwerkian shimmer on a verse-by-verse basis, until you’re unsure of whether its climactic mantra—“It’s going to feel like shit forever!”—is meant to sound like resignation or celebration. At his most monstrous—like on “Stabbed by a Knight”—Fec lets the song’s teeth-grinding metallic riff play call-and-response with disarming R&B breaks and twinkling keyboard frippery, instantly transforming the album’s scariest song into its most playful.
Hot Wet & Sassy is a less intriguing proposition when its enigmatic qualities give way to campy pranksterism and blown-out sonics—like when Fec invites Trent Reznor in for a cameo and renders him as musical mulch to throw into the cauldron. Their collaboration, “Babysitter,” is less a song than a two-minute stutter-funk trailer for some straight-to-video slasher flick, with Fec repeating the line “I’m the new babysitter” as if the flesh was melting off his face, while Reznor hides behind the sort of obfuscating falsetto he’s rarely indulged in since “Heresy.” If anything, Reznor’s presence is more strongly felt on a spiritual level on tracks like “Motherfuckers 64,” which more closely aligns Tobacco’s M.O. with the original Nine Inch Nails mission of making ‘80s Depeche Mode sound more demonic. But Fec also spends a great deal of Hot, Wet, & Sassy trying to make his proverbial hate machine look prettier, by exploring how his discomfiting voice adapts to more serene surroundings.
Alas, the results can leave him sounding awkwardly exposed: on “ASS-TO-TRUTH” and “Perfect Shadow,” the contrast between Fec’s mutant vocals and the songs’ slow-jam vibes can leave him looking like a guy who shows up for work November 1st still dressed in his Halloween costume. However, on “Jinmenken,” his breathy delivery fogs up the windows on an intimate ballad, turning the ghostly qualities of his voice into an effective complement to lyrics that ruminate over post-breakup absence and unanswered phone calls. And coming out of the ambient interstitial “Poisonous Horses,” the gently glitching “Mythemim” emerges as Hot, Wet, & Sassy’s greatest revelation, the point where Fec keeps his subversive tendencies in check long enough to fully surrender to beauty. Fec inhabits the song as a benevolent apparition, coasting atop its analog synth clusters and pinballing breakbeats into the sunset. But the song’s blur yields the album’s most profound moment of clarity—because even if you can’t make out what Fec is saying, you can certainly see his smile.
Buy: Rough Trade
(popitrecords.com.)
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