For as long as I recall, I’ve had severe, chronic, treatment-resistant depression. In my case, it manifests most painfully as a self-evident, gospel-truth, know-it-in-my-kidneys belief that I am a repulsive, radioactive piece of shit that needs to die. Much of my life has been a series of experiments undertaken with hopes of shifting that belief. 

Not much has helped. One thing that has is ketamine-assisted therapy, with the “trip” being the most therapeutic element of the experience. It’s not easy to do justice to it, although that didn’t stop me from trying to eff the ineffable here, here, or here. 

It helped me zoom out, go meta, and see my life as essentially a series of choices about how I want to interpret my thoughts, perceptions, sensations, and intuitions.

I only have the options I know I have. Ketamine-assisted therapy helped me see options I hadn’t seen before. More importantly, it helped me remember those unknown options are always there. 

It’s an effective emergency brake for rumination death spirals and suicidal ideation. It’s helped me reconstruct my whole philosophy of life. And, like drugs at large, it facilitates glorious sessions of music overappreaction.

The Soft Pink Truth is Drew Daniel, better known as half of the artsy electronic outfit Matmos. Much of what Matmos does is more conceptually interesting than fun to listen to. The most justly heralded record is probably A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure, a satirical, ambitious, and eerily infectuous work of musique concrete assembled entirely from audio recordings of cosmetic surgery.

As The Soft Pink Truth, Daniel continues to make big statements. He has a penchant for translating the hypermasculine posturing of punk (2004’s Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Soft Pink Truth?) and metal (2014’s Why Do the Heathen Rage?) into the language of club music, for which he clearly bears a soul-deep, affectionate appreciation.

Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase?, conceived as a response to creeping global fascism and released during the early months of COVID in 2020, the weirdest year of all our lives, is different in kind. It may be the only one of its kind.

It retains the impossiby lush, ticklishly complex production of Daniel’s 100% computer-made stuff. It’s also got vibraphone, a runaway sax, gorgeous piano figures from M.C. Schmidt (the other half of Matmos), and even prettier three-way vocal harmonines. It’s got elements of ambient, electropop, jazz, and modern classical, and it feels more “organic,” for lack of a better word, than anything else Daniel has done. 

“Human.” That’s a better word. This one’s a celebration of the power of a creative community in close quarters.

There are no lyrics save the titular query. It offers cryptic critique of the idea of Original Sin, which has strong ideological purchase outside Christianity. There are traces of it in the bastardized therapy-speak of TikTok and slogans such as “no ethical consumption under capitalism.” It shows its most hideous face in cases of severe chronic depression. 

Each side of the LP is a seamless half of one larger piece. The tracks are indexed, each with one word of the title, save for the closer “May Increase,” which gets two. And it’s an absolute joy to listen to. It’s circuitous, exuberant, and deeply sad, with ebbs, flows, detours, crescendos, and a thrilling punchline near the end. It’s not just a trip – it’s a journey. Hold up a sec. I need to write that down.

I personally prefer to listen to Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase? while wearing a blindfold and consuming one of the ketamine lozenges I used to be able to get through the mail, when COVID gave everyone the sort of access to drugs generally reserved for washed-up celebrities. This combination was a major component of my survival through some of the gnarliest times of my life, including a slow divorce that ran concurrently with early COVID. Before that, the K also helped lock in my final breakup with booze, which could have been streamline had Daniel been gracious enough to create his masterpiece years earlier.

Everyone loves their own drugs and hates everyone else’s drugs. Ketamine tends to get lumped in with psychedelics, although it’s very much a dissociative with significant baggage from its long history as a celebratory club drug. After the death of Matthew Perry, K is undergoing a heavy backlash from the press and likely the feds, sooner than I’d like. 

As someone who attempted to self-medicate for two decades with alcohol – with uneven results and diminshing returns – I’m familiar with the dull horror and acute humiliation of addiction. And yet, being a literate adult, I also understand that the people who die, fuck up their bladders, or become the current iteration of Elon Musk from railing ketamine are using unreliable street K in exponentially larger amounts than is used in ketamine-assisted therapy. The poison and the medicine are in dose, set, and setting.

Furthermore, if I’m allowed to continue listening to Shall We Go On Sinning… while viewing the world from the perch of my highest intelligence, on a totally manageable and responsible dose of ketamine, I may be headed for something big. I can’t promise anything, but I feel a breakthrough brewing on the horizon. I might get to the bottom of all this. I might save us.

Would my life be worth living if I were not allowed to suck down ketamine troches while listening to The Soft Pink Truth? Perhaps. But it would be less worth living, in ways that would diminish us all.

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