Do you recall Good Fuck, that collaboration between the singer from Make Believe and the artist who used to perform as Spa Moans? Well they ended up dropping that moniker after a deliriously prolific global pandemic in favor of their given names, Tim Kinsella & Jenny Pulse. But it turns out that even after making their Kill Rock Stars premiere with 2023’s Giddy Skelter, these two had one more name change in the chamber. Which brings us to their latest iteration, Kinsella & Pulse, LLC, and Open ing Night, the debut LP of their third reinvention.
This sequence of songs is the duo’s most traditionally rock-forward document yet, spurred on no doubt by the addition of Theo Katsaounis, drummer and multi-instrumentalist of Kinsella’s retired Joan of Arc project. The three began touring these songs in 2023 with a stage plot of Kinsella and Pulse flanking Katsaounis, armed respectively with guitar and bass and a tabled array of synthesizers and samplers culminating in the middle. His tactility is unmistakable, from the full kit swagger of “Love” to the deluge of toms on “Quiet”. It’s awesome as a fan of the musical family tree to hear him in this context again, while also adding a very welcome organic groove structure to a sound that has, as of yet, largely relied on pre-rendered percussion.
Despite its occasional straightforward “band” elements, Open ing Night is in a constant state of looking at something sideways to accurately observe it, as is the praxis of its authors. Their zine from that tour, How to Make the Album You’re Trying to Make, lays out their methods bare in a series of systems and confines that conduce the end goal. The creative process is such a singular phenomenon, but their workmanlike attitude and regimen toward the whole thing is so palatable and convincing, that perhaps it could work for just about anybody. Between weekly trips to the Art Institute of Chicago soundtracked by their latest headphone mixes and being fastidious cataloguers and ardent concertgoers of their local scene, they’ve found a winning formula for their brand of weird.
“Watch and See” reignites Kinsella’s recurring subject of animus toward his late father; a difficult relationship, to put it lightly, that brother Mike Kinsella has also written about in recent years. He sings of a situation—clearly plucked from reality but somewhat vague without a lyric sheet to pore over—in which by some fault of the patriarch, Tim had to miss out on seeing the UK’s most infamous goth rock act: “I can’t believe I have to miss The Cure, that’s just my life, I fuckin’ haaaaaate my daaaaaad.” All of this narrative over a pulsating club atmosphere with bad mood guitar transpires before it all stops on a dime as he shouts the opening line “I was a boy on another planet” louder and louder until becoming unintelligible. It’s an uncomfortable but truthful meditation of that righteous, pubescent anger one feels in that era of life, reading like a diary entry that holds true to this day.
Whereas the tunes with Kinsella’s lead vocals often evoke feelings and sonic qualities of the avant-garde, these notions are balanced out with pop sensibilities from Pulse when she’s at the mic. Open ing Night’s best song, “Brutal, The Way You Like”, is an outright banger, the likes of which share DNA with Pulse’s solo effort Marmalade, bearing a simple, pounding ’80s discotheque stomp and a bass progression that’s sparse, sensible, and rising. You’ll wish to lose yourself in it under lavender lighting in the wee small hours, alone or among company.
“The Game, The Play, The Drama, The Dream” smacks of Pram with its eerie combination of murder mystery dinner party organ synths and trepidatious, chirping beat. Guitar and bass writhe and tiptoe around each other menacingly before delving into a drone jam in its concluding section. The former instrument boasts several flavors on this record, perhaps suggesting that Kinsella’s found a reinvigorated use for it. Opener “Sally” sees its tremolo-laden strings veer from big, shimmery Ennio Morricone Western chords to creepy crawly stoner riffs, before shifting to a psychedelic, flanger-heavy mood on “Love” just one track later.
Kinsella’s career is steeped in arthouse references. The cover photo for Joan of Arc’s Live in Chicago, 1999 is a recreation of a scene from Jean-Luc Godard’s Week-end. Good Fuck’s Summer Bummer Ballads features the pair striking the same iconic embrace as Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. Following a song title’s namecheck from 2000, his long-established love for John Cassavetes has now manifested itself in an album title, albeit a slightly misspelled one. Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands are synonymous with the concept of an artistic power couple; a directing-and-acting team whose kineticism pushed and pulled at one another to produce some exceptionally dynamic, enduring, and thought-provoking work. Now who else does that remind me of…
You may purchase the record here.
