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Steph Kretowicz, "I hate it here"
This unique debut album is definitely one of the year's most pleasant surprises, as art/music journalist Kretowicz assembled a bevy of talented collaborators to craft a poignant and subtly hallucinatory tour de force of autofiction-based sound art. While some of the people involved (Mica Levi, Tirzah, etc.) certainly enhance the initial allure of I hate it here, it is a great challenge to focus on anything other than Kretowicz's sardonic, time-bending narrative as soon as she opens her mouth and things gets rolling. Thematically, the album is billed as a "psychedelic audio narrative" that "wanders through a layered and multi-dimensional notion of existence as suffering," which mostly feels apt, yet it fails to convey how truly charming and blackly funny wandering through that notion with Kretowicz can be. More importantly, this is the rare spoken word album that remains compelling beyond the first listen, as the combination of Kretowicz's deadpan, accented voice and the sound collage talents of felicita & Ben Babbitt make it an absorbing delight long after the meaning and impact of Kretowicz's words dissipate into more abstract and nuanced pleasures like texture and feeling. To my ears, this is one of the most inspired, immersive, and memorable albums of the year.
The album has the feel of a radio play, as it is centered primarily upon Kretowicz's recounting of a few significant events from her life, but her monologue is fleshed out with other voices, subtle ambient colorings, field recordings, and several surreal intrusions from scene-appropriate songs (such as Polish disco, for example). There is also a bittersweetly lovely piano theme that recurs at key moments throughout the piece. At its core, however, the album is essentially a handful of interwoven narrative threads united by the theme of suffering: an infected tattoo, an uncomfortable van trip to Poland, a desperate visit to a shaman, and the final days and funeral of Kretowicz's grandmother. Given that dark theme, a deep current of sadness, disconnection, and restlessness certainly runs throughout the album, yet Kretowicz wraps her heartwrenching memories in such a colorful, digression-filled, and bleakly amusing storytelling aesthetic that it all feels intimate, transcendent, and beautiful rather than uncomfortably sad. For example, a brief and incomplete list of my favorite moments includes: the tale of the aforementioned tattoo, a discussion of how Polish truck drivers keep themselves entertained, a morbid rumination interrupted with strong opinions about pants, Kretowicz's thoughts during a psychotropic shamanic ritual, and a treasured memory of the fleeting happiness she once experienced at a PJ Harvey concert. While a couple of the album's smeared stabs at psychedelia do not quite hit the mark for me, Kretowicz herself is an unwaveringly interesting and entertaining monologist and the album is masterfully edited and paced from start to finish. Moreover, it all builds up to quite an emotional wallop of an ending, but so far that ending has not been too heavy to deter me from immediately starting the album over again as soon as it ends. My gut tells me that I hate it here is an instant classic.
Samples can be found here.
