For over two decades, Atmosphere has maintained a course of rigorous output, releasing over two dozen studio albums, EP’s and collaborative side projects in as many years. In that time, the venerated duo have built a legacy out of bringing honesty, humility and vulnerability to the forefront of their music, continually challenging themselves to evolve without straying too far from their roots. Slug has proven masterful at storytelling and writing compelling narratives, leaving a trail of his own influence while paying homage to the rappers and songwriters that helped shape him. Ant has skillfully molded the soundtracks with inspiration from soul, funk, rock, reggae, and the wizardry of hip-hop’s pioneering DJ’s and producers, creating his own trademark sounds while providing the pulse for songs about life, love, stress and setbacks. At its essence, Atmosphere has been a musical shepherd, and with each new album comes a new journey as they guide generations of listeners through this thing called life.
A little less than a quarter of the way through Jestures, Atmosphere’s sprawling, acrobatic new album, Slug cuts right to the beating heart of this phase in the legendary duo’s catalog: “Still get nightmares when you’re living your dreams,” he raps. The cliches about creativity say that it comes from chaos—the rock star archetypes forged in the 1970s conjure images of coke spoons and trashed hotel rooms, and more recent thinking makes it inextricable from major trauma. Jestures, which is already Atmosphere’s fifth release of the 2020s, challenges that notion. This remarkably productive period has seen Slug burrow into every crevice of middle-aged stability and domestic life for its unexpected points of friction. With Jestures, this exploration has yielded its most fascinating results to date.
The first thing you notice about Jestures is its shape. Not only does it feature an eye-popping 26 songs, but those songs are arranged alphabetically by their titles: “Asshole” into “Baby” into “Caddy,” and so on. Even the lineup of guests conforms to this, with Evidence on “Effortless,” Kurious on “Kilowatts,” and a trio of heavy hitters—Musab, Muja Messiah, and Mike the Martyr—on “Mash,” among others. Both the sequencing of tracks and their sheer number are bits of misdirection. Many songs on Jestures last just long enough to fully articulate their core ideas; the crop of 26 is arranged in such a way so as to be musically intuitive and a comprehensive survey of one man’s life as he pauses to take stock.
That juncture in life is pinpointed with precision—and Slug’s characteristically sly turns of phrase. On the hypnotic “Heavy Lifting,” he gives his age as “half a hundred.” Throughout the LP, the past mixes with the present: The Buick Grand National his dad coveted (“Caddy”) gleams in his memory as conversations about how to navigate ever-evolving romantic partnership (“Baby,” “Velour”) define the new day-to-day. Hints of old Atmosphere records, including the instantly-recognizable car horn from “God Loves Ugly,” are scattered throughout, the way a scent or a phrase in a text message might send you hurtling decades into the past.
And yet this is an album not about being stuck, but about the relentless forward progress of time. “Don’t mistake my circle as the shape of repetition,” Slug raps on opener “Asshole,” underlining how central this pursuit has become. This manifests in the mundane—those rent or mortgage payments come no matter what’s happened in the 30 days since; the fridge needs to stay full—and when it comes to life’s bigger, more abstract anxieties. If, as he raps on “Daley,” Slug wants “to skip ahead to read the end of the story,” he’s out of luck.
What exists in place of that certainty that will never come is the joy of discovery. Little things you never noticed about your partner, tics your kids pick up when you aren’t looking. All of this is laid over a lush, varied set of beats from the illustrious Ant, ranging from the controlled electro-chaos of “Furthermore” to the heavy droning of “Past,” the playful drum cascade of “XXX” to the cowboy-outlaw twang of “Locusts.” Early on the title track, Slug quips that while he has both an angel and a devil on his shoulders, “all they really want is exposure.” It’s funny, but it’s also the core ethos of Jestures. On a long enough timeline, all the overdue credit card bills or lovers’ quarrels simply become the things that shape you in the present—and point you, better prepared, toward the future.
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