Nonpareils - Rhetoric & Terror (CD)

Nonpareils, aka Aaron Hemphill, presents his second studio album, Rhetoric & Terror. The album follows 2018's Scented Pictures, and finds the Berlin-based artist - previously known as co-founder and co-songwriter of Liars - compelled to write more structured music, with specific parts and intentions that allude to visual imagery and emotional states. No stranger to reinventing his approach towards composition, Rhetoric & Terror feels like we are, perhaps for the first time, opening a doorway into Hemphill's personal life, as well as his disparate sonic influences, wide-ranging journeys through philosophy, and through that, find him reflecting on his own role as an artist. The album features his wife Angelika Kaswalder on vocals throughout, plus multi-instrumentalist Morgan Henderson (a longtime friend since Henderson's time in the post-hardcore band The Blood Brothers) adding woodwinds and additional arrangement on 'Unscripting With The Snake And The Swan.' Rhetoric & Terror, despite it's intimidating name, is welcoming and playful, even during it's most intense moments.