Praise a Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)

‘Praise…’ feels like a completed maze, a finite and full creation, and cements Tumor as an extraordinary explorer.

This feels like Tumor’s masterpiece, an opus that has been laying dormant deep in the artist’s creativity waiting to be freed at the perfect time. They pieced together a tracklist that, despite the frantic nature of these songs, stays consistently chaotic even in its most mellow moments.

The album nostalgically embraces all corners of rock music past with post-punk, heavy metal glossy shoegaze and more, while still pushing the boundaries a good distance forward. ... If The Asymptotical World was the sunset preceding the meteor, then Praise A Lord is the big hunk of rock itself. The resulting explosion—in all of its chaotic, god-defying beauty—leaves a fully formed rock superstar emerging from its ashes.

Yves has carved out their own, trailblazing sound amid the racket of modernity and it truly feels like an awakening. Trapped somewhere between visceral punk, Oneohtrix Point Never and Dean Blunt, ‘Praise A Lord…’ is in fact like no other.

Yves Tumor has drawn inspiration from all those moody vocals, watery guitars and blown-out mixes to create their best album yet. ... The increased connection of the internet is taking an already rich musical landscape towards its very own singularity, and when we get there it may sound a lot like Yves Tumor’s raw, surreal, multilayered tunes.

Though the album contains some of the most straightforward rock songs of Bowie’s career so far, their search for a savior still scales to grandiose heights.

Purely in sensory terms, it’s difficult to imagine many richer-sounding rock records being released this year. Tumor treats sounds so lovingly they sometimes resemble a director framing and lighting a beloved actor, and every sound on Praise enters the mix with near-visible entrance and exit cues.

It’s Tumor’s willingness to occupy space on their own terms that has made them feel like such an important and unique artist. With its lengthy title and constant metamorphoses, Praise may be the definitive Yves Tumor album.

Praise A Lord is a record conceived and assembled with considerable care – literate, theatrical and elegantly audacious. [Apr 2023, p.62]

It’s an album that could have easily ventured too out-there for the masses to find it palpable, but thanks Tumour’s outsized talent and personality, ‘Praise…’ avoids decadence and proves richly satisfying.

Tumor hangs everything together with dark and inventive layers of pain that never relent. After Tumor ends things with a glimmer of hope on Ebony Eye, we're enthralled with their journey, eager to see where they will take us next.

At once challenging and inviting, Praise a Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) is another dazzling work from a creative whirlwind. Tumor may never find the answers they're seeking, but hearing their search is exhilarating and inspiring in its own right.

Not every song on Praise a Lord, though, is as fully developed as “Parody” and “Operator.” ... Still, these moments further highlight Tumor’s idiosyncratic approach to experimental indie-pop.

Whether they’re running away from or towards something is anybody’s guess, but crucially, Tumor remains one step ahead of the rest.

Praise a Lord… is Yves Tumor’s most palatable music to date, and for those that have enjoyed the hurricane horror of their production previously – listen back to Noid with its blood-curdling screams and whirring sirens – the clean lines here will feel a little too neat. But with a new sense of clarity in sound comes a conceptual rigour.

Generous helpings of angst and spice on Hot Between Worlds make for a raw listening experience, one which does not offer resolution or understanding, but rather a ding-dong-ditch challenge to psychic fisticuffs in the middle of the street.