[Cover photo courtesy of the artist]

Nonpareils, aka Aaron Hemphill, has announced details of his new solo album, Rhetoric & Terror, that is due for release on September 20, 2024 on Mute. The album’s first track “Opening Chord” is out now.

While some elements of the music might feel recognizable to fans of Liars, the band that Hemphill co-founded with Angus Andrew, the new track gives Hemphill’s voice center-stage and has a greater focus on melody.

Rhetoric & Terror is Berlin-based Hemphill’s second album since leaving the band Liars back in 2016. The album features Hemphill’s wife Angelika Kaswalder on vocals throughout the album and multi-instrumentalist Morgan Henderson, a friend of Hemphill’s since Henderson’s time in the post-Hardcore band The Blood Brothers, adds woodwind.

The name of the album, Rhetoric & Terror, describes a “split” that Hemphill is making from the ideas of his first solo album, and the new direction that he hopes to continue taking. The title comes from a chapter in Giorgio Agamben’s book, The Man Without Content, where he uses the concepts of rhetoric and terror to describe two different types of writers: the rhetorician and the terrorist. In that context, the terrorist is focused on feeling, whereas the rhetorician is committed to logic and form. 

Hemphill comments:

With Rhetoric & Terror, I wanted to start with emotions and feeling. I was playing with my kids, listening to Cocteau Twins, I have a wonderful partner, and it seemed very contrary to any sort of growth to sequester myself from this life in order to get into character as a musician. Instead, I tried to remove the boundaries between my creative life and my responsibilities and have it all be one fluid thing. All things at all times, and trust that this will guide my music rather than more intellectual concepts or limitations.