Don’t let the crunchy industrial electronica and skittering trap beats of early singles “Pixelated Kisses” and “Last of Dying Breed” fool you. The majority of George Kunusoki Miller’s fourth album as “Joji”, Piss in the Wind, is saturated with the maudlin, self-defeating ruminations we’ve come to expect from the former YouTube memelord (AKA Filthy Frank) turned sadboy musician. This is a record on which the enigmatic Japanese-Australian artist – best known for his 2022 piano ballad “Glimpse of Us” – conjures a restless inertia over 19 sketchy tracks that never reach the three-minute mark.
Looking back at reviews of Joji’s last album, Smithereens, I noticed the word “underdeveloped” got thrown around a lot. He’s since left his former label, 88Rising, and is releasing Piss in the Wind under his own, Palace Creek. Now he doubles down on the lo-fi sound and impressionistic songwriting in a way that suggests the nagging incompleteness in the material is intentional. It feels like a sonic extension of the thwarted yearning of which Miller sings. This can feel frustrating. But many of the comments posted on YouTube beneath the one minute 50 second single “Pixelated Kisses” find fans wishing the track were longer, suggesting Miller has nailed the art of leaving his audience wanting more. As a man who made his name online with quick, attention-grabbing, dopamine hits of comedy, Miller now makes music that deals with the fallout of the internet’s silly highs – evoking the twitchy depression of the doomscroller’s quest for unattainable connection.
His primarily self-produced, platinum-selling 2018 debut Ballads 1 was enlivened by the contributions of a host of guest artists and producers including Thundercat, Clams Casino, Trippie Red and Ryan Hemsworth. On Piss in the Wind, Miller’s melancholy expressions of feeling like a “little birdy stuck in the nest” on “Silhouette Man” are met by Californian neo-soul crooner Giveon’s confession that he’s “breathing in the night”. Over the muffled piano and distorted, car-next-door beat of “Piece of You”, the Texan rapper Don Toliver pours out his heart from “the bathroom floor”. On the more muscular, intentional synth throb of “Fragments”, experimental rapper Yeat is “stressing” on the murkily vocodered “Rose Coloured”, while and 4batz accepts“fading to black” on the hushed, melodic dreamscape of “Fade to Black”.
Miller delivers a surprisingly punchy, muttered rap-rhythm on “Cigarette”, which finds him repeating the lines: “Cigarette died/ Cigarette died/ Not again/ Never mind/ I can read your mind through the black tint.” There’s an subtle emo indie energy to the guitars of “Love You Less” with its pleading chorus and a sloshy romance to “Hotel California”. Miller’s mournful vocals reach gracefully into falsetto range on songs like “Can’t See S*** in the Club” where he proves that he’s as lost in real life as he is online. The pretty piano lines of “Horses to Water” are balanced by gnomic pronouncements: “It’s all the legs… It all tastes the same”. The sound thickens and smudges out towards the final two tracks, “Strange Home” and “Dior”.
There are no stand out, “Glimpse of Us”-style radio hits here; while “The Past Won’t Leave My Bed” has a stab at some big walloping drums it never quite soars. It’s probably intentional. Listening to Piss in the Wind can be a pretty gloomy experience, as it piles futility on futility. Ideas and tunes go unfinished. Yet its graceful, open ended melodies and raw emotions also tune into a very human ghost in the machine.