Show Me The Body’s 2017 album Corpus I remains a favorite for its ferocity and feral charms. Whenever I need a jolt, it delivers.
Alone Together is their latest, released this month on Loma Vista Recordings, and it still has bite and plenty of fight but is a more focused affair when it comes to sound.
Art reflects the times in which it was created whether we like it or not—the art or the message. Sure, some art is timeless but it’s typically the case that confrontational art becomes less so over time. Hearing 1960s protest songs waft through the dairy aisle at ShopRite being just one example and it’s impossible for modern eyes to see the outrage in Manet’s Olympia that caused such a stir when it was first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1863 that it had to be moved higher up the wall and out of reach of potential vandals. What’s more, or less, some politicians use music to promote their message with songs that don’t support their message, usurped and neutered like taking a scalpel to a watermelon in an effort to convince people that the seeds are the entire point.
From the Alone Together liner notes:
Alone Together is an album about praxis. Putting belief into action. The opening line, “radical love compels me to fight”, reflects lived experience, standing up for one another and for what you believe in, regardless of outcome. Alongside producers Klas Åhlund and Kenneth Blume, Show Me The Body have recontextualized their core language into something with more clarity than ever before. This is not about atmosphere but direct communication, a call to galvanize ourselves and the people around us.
In my lifetime I’ve never felt so motivated to fight. I’m not talking about violence, we certainly have enough of that as a matter of course and presented as entertainment, I’m talking about fighting for what I believe to be right and this impulse can be difficult to manifest in a productive manner. So I stew.
Alone Together is an album that lifts the lid off that boiling pot by making us feel and understand we’re not alone. As Patti Smith told us back in 1988—The people have the power/The power to dream, to rule/to wrestle the world from fools.