“Trace yourself / Trace yourself back / Back to where you were / When the clock stopped,” North East L.A. Coffin Prick, also known as Ryan Weinstein, sings on the post-punk, bell-laden, sax-enhanced song “Window In Your Eye” off his latest 11-song album, Loose Enchantment. “Do you remember / Remember when / You used to pay attention / To time?”

His music is it at once in and outside of time, dealing with the enchantment and disenchantment (or “loose enchantment”) of our modern age. There is a great variety on the album, from the Low-era guitars of “Shortly Forgotten Pleasure,” to the absolutely brilliant acoustic instrumental, “Theme From Other People’s Lives.”

It is his second record, figuring his way around his home studio, (his first EP featured a remix from Melt Banana!), and it’s an exercise in post-punk maximalism, with intricate beats, vocals familiar within the post-punk canon, and keyboards that circle and guitars that sometimes shred your face off. “Where we pretend (so!) / What we all think (so!) / Break it up every day (so!) / Before we walk away.”

“Not so much a ‘solo’ performer as an idea, Coffin Prick is a malleable form whose potential is concurrently cemented and unknown.” The variety on the album is a testament to Coffin Prick’s malleability, and from one track to the next, you’re surprised by the unique sounds that elicit from the different instruments and the different abstract ideas that come from Weinstein’s head and mouth.

There are a number of instrumental pieces on the album, like the bleepy boopy “Exile in Exile” and the futuristic “Push Button Village” or the six-minute multi-titled last track, a sign from Coffin Prick that when we don’t “Follow You Where You’re Talking” we can follow him where we’re listening to esoteric sound as well. That is the most compelling aspect of the album, that the simple, but idea-rich lyrics are couched in such a panoply of exciting post punk, often Bowie-influenced sound.

“Lock this door / and forget you had a key.” There is the sense on the album, like with the song, “Work,” that things seem to work and not work in our lives, alternatingly. That life is made up of “Shortly Forgotten Pleasure,” and that “either way / commitment is the biggest surprise.” Coffin Prick is a solo endeavor, but he is also surrounded by like-minded musicians, particularly the “sometimes-silent and shadowy partner,” Pancho.

He is doing the work of showing up, though there is a “loose enchantment” that seems to have taken hold of the world—whether it’s political disillusionment, or social disassociation, or existential crises, of one sort or another. “Loose enchantment / in the knick of time.” Maybe this album will tickle your fancy.

order Loose Enchantment by Coffin Prick HERE