Will Wiesenfield, better known under his experimental electronic moniker Baths, achieved almost unanimous critical acclaim for his debut album Cerulean. 2011 saw him release his second album, Pop Music/False B-Sides, which was not received as positively as his debut, but featured a few interesting cuts on it. Now Baths has released his third album, which is widely considered his second official album, Obsidian.

The new album sees him going in a much darker direction, which Wiesenfield himself has acknowledged when discussing the album, and this is evident throughout most of the album’s lyrics. Right from the start on Worsening, Baths sings apathetic and moody lines with a suicidal tendency in his trademark falsetto, and later in the song gives his bleak opinion on God over a swelling string section. Songs like Miasma Sky and Ossuary continue with these abstract references to death and self-harm, but no where is Baths’ new darker lyrical style more evident than on the appropriately titled Earth Death. The song sees Wiesenfield sing repeatedly about men being “pulled into the earth” and repeats in the chorus the lines “come kill me, I see, so alone.” While Cerulean did have some darker and depressing elements, Baths’ new focus on the fragility and pointlessness of existence really works for him, making these darker moments some of the most enjoyable on the album.
Baths does stray from this new writing style on certain songs, which seem more personal. The song Incompatible and the song directly following, No Eyes, display this perfectly, with the former seeing Will sing about his first boyfriend in an honest and utterly heartfelt manner. While the song is about a failed romance, or a “failed maiden voyage,” the upfront manner of the lyrics still depict Will in an endearing light, even when he sings that all his lover was good for was nursing “his erection back to full health,” a line which should lose sympathy with the listener if it was almost any other artist. No Eyes, which is so similar in theme it seems as if it is a sister song to Incompatible, is again as brutally honest, but sees Baths take the almost full opposite view than in the previous song in that he appears to not feel guilty about using someone for simply, as he states it, coming and fucking him.
But like all Baths’ work before this, the lyrics are not what the full focus of the album appears to be on, as his instrumentation is always so lush with glitchy and odd sounds that they can’t help but take the foreground. Obsidian sees him use harsh percussion and snares more than he did on Cerulean, although songs like Ironworks and the great closer Inter sound like they could have been B-Sides off of Cerulean, featuring more acoustically driven beats. Much like the lyrics, the instrumentation ranges between insanely dark and murky and more contrastingly uplifting, such as the intense refrain on the opening track, which hits dramatically and always surprises even when you know it’s coming. These upbeat moments aren’t frequent on here though, with songs such as Earth Death taking the cake in dark backgrounds with rhythmic percussion, abrasive snares and a rumbling synth line.
Unfortunately Baths doesn’t deliver with these spectacular beats throughout the album, with songs like Miasma Sky and Ossuary featuring very generic synth lines that are only noticeably worse than the others because they lack Wiesenfield’s expected complicated arrangements. This being said there are no bad moments on the album, simply lacklustre. Possibly the only exception to this statement would have the annoying piano riff that sporadically pops up in what otherwise could have been one of my favourite songs on the album, No Past Lives.
All in all, Baths has delivered another good album with some moments that border on perfect and the only letdowns are formed die to the fact that the expectations Will has set for his music is so high that some songs can’t be helped but falling short.

7.3/10

Favourite songs; Earth Death, Worsening, Incompatible, No Eyes