Nothing Happens When You Die

Max Tundra “Number Our Days”

It is difficult to listen to Max Tundra’s music without being acutely aware of its structure, texture, and shape. He makes the listener feel as though they are walking around on the inside of a pop song, observing its inner workings from reverse, and magnified to the point that it all becomes strange and surreal. The songs themselves are reminiscent of Scritti Politti, from the slick style on down to the cheerfully subversive substance, but Tundra’s aesthetic is far more manic and silly. He borrows liberally from video games, to the point that his compositions don’t just superficially resemble video game soundtracks, but the shifting tones and dramatic arc of the songs map on to the landscape and narrative of a video game level. This is particularly interesting in “Number Our Days,” which sounds like a colorful virtual wonderland, but expresses a sober belief that there is no life after death. The lyrics are rather melancholy and seemingly at odds with the tone of the music, but if you think of the rather fatalistic “lives” of the sort of canon fodder inhabitants of most video games, the philosophy makes a certain amount of sense playing out in this context.

Buy it from Domino Records.