August, Yours Truly is the moniker of one Taylor Elliott from Niagra Falls, Ontario. On their latest album, "Performance of a Lifetime", Elliott lays every ounce of their being on the table for the audience to see, creating a vivid journey of self-discovery through complex and imaginative auditory worlds. The concept album deals with themes of identity, performance, and solipsism and paints an abstract image of an artist losing their sense of identity when viewing themself through the lens of the audience which observe them. This sense of derealization is communicated through psychedelia and experimentation.
The album features drums and piano contributions from Cole McInerney, which Elliott says help "drive the sound of the album." The crashing tones of "Easy Listening" suit the sinister spoken word that bubbles underneath. "Creature Beautiful" features a more progressive drum pattern and toys with the idea of beauty, but most tones are eventually twisted and molded into something different. It's this malleable element to the songs that help communicate Elliott's message of an artist discovering their identity and place in the world through music and word. There's rarely a moment to get bored on this record. The songs' textures shift and bend, painting abstract imagery with sound bytes, glitches and electronic production tricks. This is done brilliantly on "Affirmations", which breaks down to a solo piano before samples of an old tv show take over and the phrase "You love me for who I am, It's nothing I could help, It's nothing I could change." repeats over a pleasant piano line.
There's plenty to delight in here, like the album highlight "For just a Moment" (Achieving effortless fluidity/Not that hard for me, in theory/Beginning to reject modernity/And masculinity, to some degree") and the epic seven-minute-long "Circus Heart", but it is certainly an album that should be enjoyed as a whole piece.
Reviewed by Jay Honeycomb on 2022-06-07
Rating: 3.5