"I want to tell you something/About the grace of faded things...." This line from the song "Southern Gothic," delivered by
Ulver's
Kristoffer Rygg near the end of
The Assassination of Julius Caesar, eventually becomes a manifesto for the single-minded aesthetic pursued on the group's first self-described "pop album." There is no irony in that statement.
Ulver have quite literally changed with every recording; they're impossible to pigeonhole. Here they circle back to the decade before their own musical emergence, delivering a deliciously dark, utterly seductive set drenched in moody '80s synth pop. As they do, they lyrically examine and juxtapose elements of history, philosophy, spirituality, and the quark strangeness of popular culture.