Ross Farrar has already lived through enough creative reinventions as the vocalist of hardcore-thrashers-turned-art-punks CEREMONY as well side-projects like the indie post-hardcore vehicle SPICE and ugly noise of Crisis Man. Left up to his own devices, we again bare witness to the very strange world that lives within his headspace channeled through a music medium that is equivocally peculiar on his debut solo effort under the moniker R.J.F, Going Strange. Fans know Farrar as an established poet beyond the pit, so it’s most surprising to discover in the album’s origin story that even after all these years as a member of one punk music’s cult beloved bands over the past decade-plus, his skills as a musician are novice at best. Yet, it’s what gives the listen – pieced together like one continuous, 45-minute-long track despite being soliced up into separate mental fragments along the way – it’s most novel characteristics. He sifts in and out of lucidity with skeletal guitar and bass lines, spectral synths and programmed percussion, and the bellow of his voice in both drawling and spoken prose. Collectively, it sounds like a smoke spirit moving through the air – a transcendental gothic séance in a sense that blurs the lines between impressionism and reality. There’s a moment toward the album’s end on the track “Cleveland” where Farrar recounts a dream, but we don’t find out that it’s a dream until the very end. “You can’t start out your story with ‘Last night I dreamt…,’ ’cause people check out after you tell them that,” he remarks. With that, a glimpse into the psyche of Ross J. Farrar makes you wonder which world you’ve just lived in.

Highlights: “Cutting”, “On the Streets”, “Emilie’s Dream”

R.J.F.’s Going Strange is available now.

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