Album Review – Don’t Forget To Remember by Noah Roth (2023) (Devil Town Tapes)
Noah Roth returns following the specifically and often gloriously obtuse folk rock of his 2022 Breakfast of Champions album to release a follow-up that is something of a necessary complete contrast.
Post break-up with a loved one, Roth found himself back in his childhood parental home, submerged by ‘get away emotional necessity’ and perhaps (…and we have all been there after being bruised by heartache) the need just to be surrounded by unconditional love.
No band members, none of his own recording equipment, and the need to get things out of his mind meant that he stumbled into a new way to express himself that primarily revolved around fuzz laced noise-pop augmented by his own unique sense of melody.
Somehow the noise just works with a strange sense of apposite bitterness that is engulfed by an ever-ready acceptance that all is how it was supposed to end, with tracks such as C U Tomorrow, Soon, Paris, Texas, Upside Down Photographs, and Paper Tigers squeezing sly faux melodies out of an untamed ramshackle fuzz that seems to accentuate every ounce of relationship confusion in a very similar manner to the brilliance of recent Walter Etc. releases.
However, Roth just would not be Roth if he did not push the parameters of sound as close to the weird bracket as possible. As such, Perfect Detail, Carl St. Bernard, Part 1, and Carl St. Bernard, Part 2, crumble lo-fi jangled riffs deep into the crevices of weird, fractious anti-melodies. The tracks feel truncated, never able to flow, but still offer the strange beauty that can sometimes only truly emanate from a troubled mind.
Where Roth ventures hereafter will be extremely interesting. For he has just opened a musical avenue for himself and one in which he truly excels.
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