L. Eugene Methe’s work up to now has been everywhere in the map. The Nebraska-based musician has recorded one LP of lyrically exact, performatively unfastened songs considerably equally to the output of fellow Omaha resident (and Grapefruit label proprietor) Simon Joyner. As a sideman, he’s performed keyboards for Joyner and others. However he’s additionally recorded murky audio environments with Naturaliste and Citizen Electrical, whose recordings Methe has launched on his personal Gertrude Tapes label. On Possibly, Tomorrow, he combines these disparate sound worlds with powerfully disorienting outcomes.

“Road Leaf” units the stage. The drums sound like distant gunshots and the guitar like amplified corrosion whereas Methe articulates a perspective so distant that by track’s finish, its narrator not is aware of if he even exists. “Hours” shifts to an exterior perspective, with funereal electrical piano and cello framing a portrayal of psychological decline. To this point, the sounds serve the songs’ bleakness. However advance a pair tracks to “Electrical,” and issues get extra sophisticated. Whereas the track’s protagonist appears painfully over-preoccupied with private battle, the music appears to swallow him up after which spit him out once more. Is it expressing his battle, or making enjoyable of it?

“Ice Machine” begins out as one other darkish story, with Methe recounting a dire tavern scene. However then a swirl of loops pulls the listener into the titular machine’s guts, then down via the ground, the place the album’s monstrous centerpiece awaits. “Frigidaire” is a remorseless pummel, with a stomping groove like one thing that Throbbing Gristle would possibly’ve concocted for the motion scenes of Jurassic Park, if solely Genesis P-Orridge and Co. may’ve talked their means into being the film’s Foley artists. However simply when evidently Methe has misplaced his phrases, the racket evaporates, and his cracked, apologetic croon rises up via a shimmer of vibes and strings. What simply occurred? At that second, the singer is likely to be Paul Hackett, Griffin Dunne’s character in Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, solely he ends the film sitting in entrance of a piano as an alternative of a pc keyboard.

—Invoice Meyer