Echoes of Silence Review

Opening with a Michael Jackson cover is either arrogance or a thesis, and D.D. turns out to be both: the same song, sung with the joy drained out and the paranoia left in. That is the whole record. After the drift of Thursday this one tightens, and the difference is audible inside a bar. Montreal is sung half in French over a sample so mournful it barely moves. Initiation pitches his voice up and down until one man becomes a room of leering strangers, still the most genuinely unsettling thing he has put on tape.

Same Old Song brings Juicy J and a hard dry snare. The title track closes on piano and a voice that finally sounds tired rather than predatory, which is the first honest moment in nine months of posing. The writing stays narrow, circling the same suite, the same drugs, the same girl who never gets a name, and by the third tape the pose has started to calcify. The craft is high and the ending is earned, and then he went quiet for two years.