R.J.F.: Strange Going

On Emelie’s Dream – the closing track to Ross J. Farrar’s 2023 album, Going Strange – he confessed that is was “romantic going through tunnels in your mind.”

Under the R.J.F. guise this feels like standard fare. Far removed from his main vocation as leader of moody post-punks Ceremony, Farrar’s solo endeavours see him in recluse mode, with soundscapes echoing a post-pandemic anxiety. Unlike many who were unproductive during these turbulent times, it feels like Farrar spent the lockdown plotting what would become last year’s Going Strange, with next chapter, Strange Going, plunging deeper into the abyss.

Strange Going is a shift from its predecessor (if they are indeed siblings, then consider them estranged). Farrar’s vocal delivery here, buried several layers underneath the mix, like a broken whisper through the fog. Farrar’s songs are aloof and fragile, to the point where they freeze your nerves.

Drahla: angeltape

Not a world away from Chicago DIY purveyor, Ellis Swan, on Strange Going Farrar is the architect of spatial, loner-leaning post-hardcore. Sharp, poetic snippets inspired by observing the everyday from afar. And with these final musings shaped and chiselled between the bedroom walls in solitude, the themes that underpin Strange Going confirm that Farrar revels in such places.

“There’s a heaven in hell, they say,” he mumbles nervously during the opening Man Dies – a morose, brittle tale that are the seeds for despair (“I love so much that I’m left depleted / And some of them hate me for it”). This bleak residue drips into the eerie sing-speak lurch of Strange Going’s highlight, Sonny John. Cracked slowcore with the kind of raw emotion that is unlikely to be matched all year.

And there’s more of it. The one-two gut-punch of Warm Alone and Swamp – brooding nightscapes that see Farrar reaching back into ’90s: think Brian McMahan being backed by Labradford with a new tone of A.M. dread. So too on Caterpillar and Illusion of Control – songs with grinding bass weight and skewed instrumentation, including a rhythmic slow-paced take on afrobeat. Throughout these passages, Farrar showcases an array of ideas that are as interesting as it gets within the paradigm of guitar-based music.

While Going Out is quintessential loner balladry that sees darkness thumping at the door (“You were already there in my mind / When no one’s around, it starts”), it’s Danger in Freedom which stirs up the embers as much as Sonny John. With Neubauten-like uncanniness, lyrically Farrar fires a blitzkrieg of philosophical soundbites that keep you going back for more (“Learning to become obsolete/ You have to stand in the middle of it”).

Writhing Squares: Mythology

As the closing, keys-led Cuba possesses the kind of artistic freedom you’d associate with lo-fi, you can’t help but go back Danger in Freedom and the metaphysical gold dust that is scattered throughout its seven minutes and twenty-eight seconds. Leaning into the microphone, Farrar parts with his most profound statement, “Let go of what doesn’t serve you.”

Between Going Strange and Strange Going, it’s the defining moment. So often, we persist with things in life that prove too much of a burden. From over-bloated consumerism and the black pits of social media to toxic relationships, letting go doesn’t seem to be a viable option in the ire of the storm; yet, to maintain sanity, it’s the only option.

In his own way, Farrar opens the door that leads to the freedom everyone deserves. The world is hard to navigate without the burden of excess, and throughout Strange Going, Farrar taps into the beautiful abandonment that lo-fi masters such as Lou Barlow and Emil Amos have been telling us about for years.   

Strange Going is out now via Industry Standards. Purchase from Bandcamp.