The Dodo’s last album, Carrier, was made in the wake of the death of their live guitarist Christopher Remer (see also: Women). It was a record brimming with emotion and fairly complex arrangements, easily one of The Dodo’s best albums. Immediately following the making of that album, Meric Long and Logan Kroeber, who’ve always been the band’s nucleus, set about recording ideas that later became their new album, Individ. The irony is that Carrier feels like the album they should have made now, while healing and learning to move on; it’s an album with a hopeful vibe, uppity around its edges. Whereas Individ is very raw, like an open wound, and feels like a band struggling to keep its grip, to preserve its own sanity. Lyrically, you could argue that Carrier is darker, but Individ has a more depressing sound overall. Not that this makes it a bad album. If you like abrasive, post-grunge guitars that sound like a junkie going through a brutal withdrawal then Individ might be your favorite album by The Dodos to date. And that’s not such a bad thing either. There’s something to be said for blistering emotion. Individ might lack the impressive rhythms of Carrier, yes, but the rhythms it does have are ferocious. It’s a very guttural record, while they better pinpointed their feelings in the lyrics of Carrier, here they act them out in a blistering way that takes no prisoners. It’s a veritable sonic outburst and it’s fascinating to behold.
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