Figs

With Figs, its first album in five years, Milwaukee hip-hop duo Def Harmonic has re-emerged with the feel-bad local rap record of the year, a candy-colored sigh that inhales bad vibes about the inherent emptiness of existence and exhales billowy synths and ping-pong drum machines. Upping the fidelity of his electro-pop experiments with rock-oriented bands like Leo Minor and Wizard Of Cause, MC/producer J. Todd gives Figs an alluringly chilly sheen that only intensifies the record’s overwhelming “lonely in a crowd” feeling. It’s the sound of spiritual crisis overwhelming your party buzz as everybody laughs and dances around you.

“Rock me back to sleep,” Def Harmonic’s co-pilot Lunaversol 9 sings on the opening track, “The Drum Machine In The Sky,” and Todd obliges with a bloopy, bleary-eyed keyboard riff and anxiously jittery beat that takes a sluggish crawl toward an Ambien coma. But even when he’s bummed out, Todd knows how to put a good track together, whether it’s the slippery Love Below-inspired fractured funk of “My Own Devices” or the’60s Bollywood swing of “Backpack.”

On the album’s last (and best) song, “There’s A Hole In The Universe,” Todd affects his best psych-soul Prince croon and sings that “this is just an illusion, and this is just a game … so I turn up the beats and fight.” If you can’t fix the world, you might as well try to re-join the party. As Todd asks at one point, “If life wasn’t a riddle then why would you care?”—on Figs, even if the destination seems dire, the journey is frequently thrilling.