1) This Piece of Poetry Is Meant to Do Harm; 2) Rock City Wankers; 3) Clamour for Glamour; 4) One of Us Is Gonna Die Young; 5) Let Me Down Gently; 6) Hey Kwanongoma!; 7) The Others; 8) Girl You're Gonna Get 'Em (Real Soon); 9) Deliver Us From Free Will; 10) No End; 11) Trust Is Shareware
Disjointed and unfocused attempt at a new sound, but in their hyperactive back-and-forth The Ark do pull off some intriguing songs.
Key tracks: “Clamour for Glamour”, “Hey Kwanongoma!”, “Deliver Us From Free Will”
The third album is usually where bands start changing things around, toying with their established sound and exploring new avenues. The glam rock sound that The Ark had been triumphing with has therefore appropriately been updated for their respective third record State of The Ark, and replaced with a clearer influence from the artsier side of 80s new wave. Everything is processed to the point that sometimes it's hard to tell where the live band ends and the programmed elements
begin: the drums have been filtered to the inch of their life so the
snares blare with a dull electronic thud, there's zany keyboard and
synthesiser elements all over the place and the production lays a
pristine, plastic skin over the band underneath. There's a lack of bass tones and depth, which comes off almost cheap at first until it clicks that it's pretty on par with the British invasion groups of the 1980s, although that doesn't really excuse it as such either. The band have clearly retained their own identity so it's undeniably The Ark we are talking about, but State of The Ark represents a big leap into somewhere completely different.
The more surprising change is how bitter The Ark are throughout State of The Ark. The first two albums were above anything else positive records: life-affirming motivational boosts, charming sass and extended verses on believing in oneself. Now the album starts with a venomous kiss-off (“This Piece of Poetry Is Meant to Do Harm” is exactly what it states), moves onto various takedowns on rock star and celebrity culture (“Rock City Wankers”, “Clamour for Glamour”), flips off organised religion for good measure on the way (“Deliver Us From Free Will), and never in a particularly constructive fashion. They’re snappy and annoyed; even the tracts on all outcasts coming together sound like they’re building a mob (“The Others”). Even the more surreal lyrics (which there are plenty this time) tend to veer into quick frustrated quips before moving on, and when it’s direct it’s awkwardly so - “now here’s some good advice: try some manners fuckface” is a long way from the past two records’ lyrics. This isn’t necessarily bad by default but the issue that The Ark bump into with it is that this negative attitude comes across off when it’s coming from them. It’s like when we’re hungry, we’ve had a bad day at work and we accidentally snap at people next to us; that’s not really who you are and even you acknowledge it. State of The Ark is like Ola Salo just wasn’t in the mood for anything at the day of recording and so you get a set of songs that don’t sound right, and never sits comfortably.
It further accentuates what a strange record State of The Ark is. Between the catty attitude and the new sound, The Ark’s songwriting has gone slightly off the rails. You can count the typical Ark-like anthems with one hand: “One of Us Is Gonna Die Young” with its arpeggio synths is a jolly choice of an obvious lead single, “No End” is gentle and intimate in a way that breaks through the tough guy facade for a little bit, and “Trust Is Shareware” plays the whole inspirational anthem thing pretty straightforwardly, though not to particularly exciting degree. Elsewhere it’s strange song structures where verses and choruses mismatch in style and tone, quirky ideas extended into entire songs and odd hybrids of new and old styles clashing. The hit and miss ratio is therefore unsurprisingly wild. The apocalyptic disco of “Deliver Us From Free Will” with its hyper-processed MIDI-esque power chords, oddball call-and-answer bridges and heaven-reaching conclusion is a piece of mad genius I can’t help but unequivocally adore, "Rock City Wankers" is saved from its trite lyrics by its hyperactive flick back and forth between a suave New York rock club and a bright and coke-fumed 80s synth scene, and the janky “Hey Kwanongoma!” sounds less like a song and more like a snowball that keeps tumbling down the hill and picks up vocoders, breakdowns, absurdist lyrics and long chorus windups along the way and it's both ballsy and effective. But then you get something like the “My Sharona” -riffing “Girl You’re Gonna Get ‘Em” or the rackety mess of “The Others” and I still don’t really know what to think of them, but it isn't glowing praise.
To its credit State of The Ark succeeds more than it fails, and at parts it does move to a direction which sounds like a natural advancement for the band, taking into account the aspirations of the new production style. The hyper-active hook brigade of “Clamour of Glamour” is musically the best of both worlds that The Ark have operated under and the moody synth pop flirtation of “Let Me Down Gently” feels criminally underdeveloped on an album where most songs end up throwing some kind of a big explosive finale; both are among the album’s most infinitely revisitable tracks simply because of how effortless they come across. The issue I have with the other songs isn’t really either the tone or the sound per se, but more that in their wild abandon they end up taking a step back for every three taken forward; I heartily enjoy most of the songs across the record but nearly all come with a ‘but...’ caveat, and as a result State of The Ark as a whole ends up plateauing somewhere along the same. It’s a good record, but it has its problems with occasionally unfocused songs, a few clunkers and the production sucking the life out of the band in the handful of songs where it isn’t working perfectly in unison with the writing.
The name State of The Ark always struck me as odd for the sleeve it’s written on. It feels like it’s meant to come across as a statement akin to ‘this is who we are now’ but the album doesn’t give the impression that The Ark really knew what they were aiming to achieve in earnest. It’s more tempting to refer to the title in the more colloquial meaning of being in a state - i.e. being a mess, disorganised, and so on. It’s more apt, if nothing else; it sounds like a band in flux pulled into the studio while they were still figuring out what they were doing, and they were cranky about it.
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