Motherfucker, I am Both: "Amen" and "Hallelujah" is one of a kind. Shearling bolts from the gates with the unbridled release of their debut album.

Alex Kent and Sylvie Simmons continued their creative endeavors straight through the dissolution of Sprain. They joined forces with drummer Andrew Chanover and bassist Wes Nelson shortly thereafter. The following year of collaboration produced hundreds of hours of unreleased recordings as they amassed a sound bank from which they sampled to tailor the musical tapestries featured on this record. An eclectic patchwork of dissonant noise rock, neoclassical arrangements, minimalist folk, chiptunes, glitch experiments, percussion ensembles, homemade gamelan, microtonal Mellotron drones, re-sampled improvisations, and electroacoustic noise can be discerned from the dizzying aural splay which grounds the record like a rug constantly being pulled out from underneath. This inclusion of disparate elements amounts to a cohesive totality that is greater than the sum of its parts. With various fidelities welcomed, everything from studio sessions engineered by Jason Schimmel, live recordings, and even phone demos were thrown into the blender that yielded Motherfucker. Scott Evans' mixing and Cleo Henman's mastering painstakingly ushered the band's expansive sentiment to realization. Boise's Shadrach Tuck of Mishap Records has accommodated the far reach of their vision with his hands-off approach to curation. Provided with such conditions and impetus, Shearling has generated enough material to spill over into a complete sister record that is well underway. Motherfucker is part one.

This album is barefoot, traversing a road graveled with ice cubes or hot coals. The end is nowhere in sight. Every feverish step is a poem. Repeated sessions of wide open improvisation have developed and turned loose an instinctive musical chemistry which encircles the bandmates and pervades Motherfucker. Its spirit scratches the ceilings of heaven and stirs the depths of hell.

Horses, saws, and landmarks hidden in the plain sight of Middle America are among Kent's muses in preceding works. Their recurrence here serves to shape an array of colorful potencies that charge Shearling's snowballing mythos. The listener is cornered into suspension that reframes the repulsive. Jarring subject matter are garnished with candor and cast as images of the sublime, all while keeping vulgarity in tact. We hear its cold blood boil over. Motherfucker is hyperbolic, unrelenting, and stark naked. Shearling is sincere against all odds.