Yves Tumor began their career in the low-ceilinged world of experimental noise, but from the outset, their yearning—for bigger stages, sweeping statements, limitless horizons—was palpable. “I only want to make hits,” they said with a laugh in 2017. “What else would I want to make?” Since signing to Warp, Yves Tumor has scaled upward so quickly that it sometimes seemed their own music was racing to contain their ambitions. As 2018’s darkly sensuous Safe in the Hands of Love gave way to the sex-god theatrics of 2020’s Heaven to a Tortured Mind, the only true constant was Tumor’s near-religious devotion to the possibilities of recording—for the careful placement of perfect sounds within implied space. For Tumor, headphone space is holy space, a sanctuary in which all sorts of transfigurations become possible.
With Praise a Lord Who Chews but Does Not Consume (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds), Tumor reaches an inflection point in their arms race with their own talent and ambition. They’ve got Noah Goldstein on board, a one-time Kanye engineer who worked on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, alongside Alan Moulder, one of the most celebrated architects of guitar sounds in rock history. From the sound of it, they’re pursuing an ecstatic fusion of alt-rock and R&B, seeking the mysterious nexus where Loveless meets Purple Rain. The guitars roar with jet engine propulsion, threatening to consume everything in their midst, a clear trademark of shoegaze pioneer Moulder, while Tumor’s doubled vocals ring out in an unmistakable echo of Prince. On “Operator,” Tumor even lets out the pained, wordless eros-yip—more feline than human, equally childlike and adult—that was one of Prince’s aural markers.
Countless bands have turned to Moulder over the decades, hoping some of the comet-trail dust of his famous shoegaze records would settle on their project. But only someone with an imagination as glittering and generous and expansive as Tumor’s can tap Moulder and make a record like this. Purely in sensory terms, it’s difficult to imagine many richer-sounding rock records being released this year.
Tumor treats sounds so lovingly they sometimes resemble a director framing and lighting a beloved actor, and every sound on Praise enters the mix with near-visible entrance and exit cues. The wall of guitar distortion that kicks in on “Meteora Blues” only lasts a few moments on each chorus, but it is the most exhilarating evocation of the Smashing Pumpkins guitar sound that has ever existed outside of Melon Collie or Siamese Dream. Once you hear it, you spend the rest of the song yearning for it to return. Ditto the synthesizers that well up in the last minute of “Echolalia,” so dimensional and detailed it feels as if you could reach and put your fingers through them like mist. It’s a testament to Tumor’s loving touch that none of these gestures feel empty or formal: Each one resounds with the fullness, somehow, of a life lived.