Anyone who is familiar with the music of artists Tobin Prinz and Suzi Horn, aka Prinzhorn Dance School, is already familiar with their artistic concept: the rawness associated with outsider art meets the sparseness and power of post-punk music. Their band name – and stage names – come from Dr. Hans Prinzhorn, a German psychiatrist who famously collected the art of his patients and inspired Jean Dubuffet to coin the term art brut when developing his own artistic philosophy, which focused on an appreciation of so-called “low art” and primitivism instead of polish and conventional beauty. Art brut, later termed outsider art in English, is widely defined as art made by people without artistic training, outside of professional and academic spheres, but it was initially used to describe the pieces made by Prinzhorn’s psychiatric patients as well as by prisoners and children. Dubuffet’s art often included the incorporation of such raw materials as straw and sand in order to capture the roughness he valued as “authentic”. True to this conceit, PDS’s music is simple, repetitive, sometimes disturbing, and in both music and lyrics is certainly highly evocative of the raw and untrained. How respectful and ethical this mimicry is is perhaps not my place to say, but as a novel approach to the chill of post-punk music it works, if in a rather heavy-handed way. It often draws the ear away from the music itself and towards an appreciation of the structure and design that is integral to the music. It also works as a welcome reprieve from maximalist trends in dance music, serving as a thought-provoking palate cleanser with that dance backbone still intact.
Clay Class, appropriately, comes after the drawing class that was 2007’s Prinzhorn Dance School in the band’s artistic development and, following the skill set established with their first LP, this second album is more fleshed out than PDS’s self-titled debut outing in 2007. Slightly more fleshed out, that is. That album practically assaulted the ears with its glaring blasts of silence amid a framework so spare and sharp that it practically bristles with discomfort and irritation, begging for the listener to keep their distance. The starkness of the production used on it certainly proved a point about musical simplicity and power, but it also perfectly complemented lyrics about the mundanity of working class life; the empty routine of eat, sleep, work. The repetition of the lyrics echoes the repetition of the music, both working together to compound the effect of stultifying sameness, unvarying boredom.
“Happy in Bits” opens Clay Class and right from the outset it’s apparent that there is a new warmth present in the mix. While still a good distance away from the sound of more conventional post-punk bands, the silence isn’t as aggressive here, becoming an ingredient in the mix rather than its most important component. Repetition and simplicity still reign supreme, though, and the lyrics “I’m glad you’re here/building on sand/So glad you came/Drawing in wax” while repetitive and evocative of a hospital patient receiving a visitor and the associated bittersweetness of that visit, also serve as a welcome of sorts to the listener. There’s even a semblance of melody in a tumbling guitar part that follows this phrase. So while there’s less atmospheric alienation here than anything on Prinzhorn Dance School, “Happy in Bits” also lyrically shows that there are moments of real contentment in the company of others.
“Usurper” isn’t as friendly, dealing with feelings of being unwanted and the experience of being pushed aside and replaced. A child is specifically mentioned in the lyrics (“Do you look in a child’s eyes and say/Usurper, replacer”) along with mention of the cyclical, circular regularity of being supplanted by someone/thing different and novel. “Seed, Crop, Harvest” revisits a favourite PDS theme of regularity, the inevitably of the seasons, even when experiences feel new (“Got off the treadmill/Got off the breadline/It’s a new dawn/It’s harvest time”). An ominous bass line underpins swathes of guitar in the intervals between verses and it’s particularly clear here that PDS’s approach to musically exploring their ideas of rawness and alienation has shifted. “I Want You” furthers this stylistic change; the song is positively sweet and gentle with its thrumming one-note guitar part and simple, charming harmonies. The lyrics tell a drastically different story: between repeated declarations of “I want you” are discomfiting verses of obsessive jealousy or smothering love or both. The words “I want you/suffocate your soul/cage your freedom/in a loving prison” offer creepy counterpoint to what could be a little love song. I suppose, in its disturbed way, it is a love song, but from a psychologically and ethically muddled perspective and as such surprises and stands out on Clay Class.
“Your Fire Has Gone Out” addresses the meaningless of boredom and instead of keeping lyrics sparse, paints a depressingly grey picture of travel and experience without interest or passion. The lyrics also point to the sameness of large cities, all looming buildings and office drones, public transit and loneliness in the presence of thousands of people. “Crisis Team” is about the emotional depression that comes with winter and its pervasive chill. After a couple of verses that repeatedly mention whiteness, coldness, and death, a refrain is introduced that tells of a scary kind of co-dependency. The words “I need your crisis in my life/Can’t breathe with no accident” are sung in a hauntingly pretty melody that lends poignancy to this confession of addiction to emotional turmoil. Economic depression is the subject of “The Flora and Fauna of Britain in Bloom” and lyrics about unemployment and poverty are contrasted by images of cold, uninviting, and neglected parks. “Sing Orderly” perfectly encapsulates the mostly meaningless minutiae of the everyday, interspersed with occasional mentions of the need to be looked after and cared for. “Shake the Jar” ends the album on a less depressing, depressive note than most of the preceding songs, with the refrain “Shake your jar/Rattle your tin/Rattle their cages/Let the fight back in” alongside an almost jaunty little bass line and punctuated with unexpected percussive hits.
Despite efforts to make their music easier to digest, Prinzhorn Dance School still sound very much like themselves on Clay Class. This feels like a pretty ideal combination – the music is still stark and bare but with less of the minimalist production that made their debut album sound like the aural equivalent of a skeleton. Despite this progression, PDS’s unique viewpoint isn’t compromised at all and they manage to provoke and surprise, alienate and disturb in all the best ways possible. Draping their framework of a sound with a few more guitars doesn’t detract from the poignant isolation of their lyrics; indeed, it fills out their sound perfectly so that it emerges on just the right end of unembellished sharpness and loneliness. An accomplished follow-up to a debut album that was far from subtle in concept and execution, Prinzhorn Dance School have proved with Clay Class that they’re worth watching for the long haul.
