Grief twists Fendrix’s bucolic, borderline Regency reminiscences into absurdist pastorals. The darker side of the record is high on a kind of godlike wrath that chews down worlds, sardonic, rattled, and blazing in its devastation; the closest analogs I can think of to these freakouts are the barely contained sleaze of Mr. Bungle or Morphine. It might not occur to you to blend brawny swagger with dissonant horns, a rap-rock acrostic interlude spelling out “J-E-R-S-K-I-N,” and the vocal stylings of a manic street preacher scatting about washing his dick in the sink, as Fendrix does on the stupefying “Jerskin Fendrix Freestyle.” But if you have grieved, then you’ve felt your blood boil with the same awful futility that fuels this song. It’s too wet to call such a unique album “relatable,” but its slippage of beauty into rot, of what seem like fable-like symbols suddenly being revealed as nothing but mundane disappointments, perfectly captures the raving terror of loss.
Fendrix is obviously virtuosic (not for nothing is Black Midi drummer Morgan Simpson at the helm on several songs) and the maximalist extremes of Once Upon a Time are undoubtedly an acquired taste. But unlike with, y’know, Black Midi, virtuosity never feels like the point. Fendrix leans into ridiculousness, stretching his camp baritone through sudden lurches and grimaces, squeezing the last drop of juice out of his words. “I think it’s very important to sound as embarrassing as possible,” he told Crack of his singing style, “because it’s hard to tell the truth if everything sounds too pretty.” On “Together Again,” over piano chords that evoke a saccharine ’80s Christmas song, he lunges at words as if taking a running jump to clear a ravine. To the swooping bass and flickering handclaps of “Sk2,” he inflates like villain-man becoming monster-thing in a Disney film, petulant with despondence: “You live! You live! You live! I don’t,” he howls in accusation, then offers a threat that’s as incoherent as it is oddly heartbreaking: “I’ll cruise ’til Christmas/But after that, it’s Booze ’til Pissedmas!”
