Rantings, reviews and lists from a person who structures half his life around obsessing over music.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

The Mars Volta - Octahedron (2009)

3.5 ★/7.0 - 7.9

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.

With The Mars Volta in 2009, there's bound to be an emerging school of thought which purports to use Octahedron as an example of this theory, portraying the body of work from Omar and Cedric as blundering infinity - an endlessly spewing sewage hole of unintelligible spazztastic, progressive nonsense, and viewing Octahedron as a diamond in the rough for its more conventional reliance on prog-ballad structures. We can already see hints of this, with Pitchforkmedia indirectly declaring it the first Mars Volta album worthy of breaking past a 5.0 rating. But don't believe these doubters. As much as the band might have gone off the deep end with The Bedlam in Goliath, it's hard to imagine this radio-friendly album being successful on any level without its influences from the brainy Afro-brothers' prior experimentations. The fact is, based on the songs themselves, Octahedron is pretty damn boring. It's King Crimson balladry 101 through and through, and on long-winded snoozers like "Copernicus" or "With Twilight As My Guide", there's no denying it. The reason it works as well as it does is not because of Cedric's new reliance on his singing voice, nor is it because of the scaling down of overlong track lengths in favor of identifiable song structures. It's the unconventionality that made Bedlam in Goliath so unmemorable that gets the job done on Octahedron.

The difference is a matter of degree. The Mars Volta has never been more subtle with their psychedelic explorations as they are now, and while it may not reach the peaks of their more brain-melting sound, it's definitely a refreshing change of pace that the Drive Like Jehu-influenced acid-drenched guitars and free-jazz undercurrents of "Luciforms" are just identifiable enough to suggest discomfort but not so obvious as to inspire nausea. Similarly, the hallucinatory electronic rhythms of "Teflon" and the teetering walls of jagged riffage of "Halo of Nembutals" never overtake the basic songwriting chops, but are engaging enough to make us forget there isn't much songwriting here we haven't from these guys in the first place. Overall, unlike most of Bedlam, there's very little on Octahedron that feels like a product of random chance. Like The Mars Voltas best work, its success clearly required a delicate balancing act, and those who are usually so quick to dismiss the bands pretensions may find it a lot harder to deny them here. Read more...

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Tortoise - Beacons of Ancestorship (2009)

2.5 ★/5.0 - 5.9

Tortoise have always been a band of extremes. Their worst tracks have precisely showcased what's wrong with bands who become obsessed with texture for texture's sake, while their best tracks have probably aged better than any other Post Rock bands, and on every one of their albums you can find at least one example of both. Beacons of Ancestorship is no exception. "Northern Something" is the most listless dubscrape collage they could have made, but coming after something as direct, immediate and driving as the Apparat Organ Quartet homage, "Prepare Your Coffin", who could complain? The extended four-song lapse into dullness triggered by mindless math-punk fusion, "Yinxianghechengqui" may seem unforgivable...until the profound guitar figures and cinematic synth flourishes reveal "Charteroak Foundation" to be the band's best album closer yet.

The problem with Tortoise is that they appear so immersed in progress all the time, and so constantly trying to develop, change and experiment as a band, that it's impossible to find any work of theirs that sticks with a sound and style long enough to leave an impression. Albums like TNT, Standards and Millions Now Living..., as great as they are, will always be held back by the fact that they sound like a band still trying to figure out how to sound, including all of their studio experiments on the final product just to show it, and Beacons suffers tenfold from this. Still though, the band's most homogenous and musically focused album of their career, It's All Around You, was arguably one of their weakest, so perhaps being in a constant state of flux is the best thing for them. Indeed, the best tracks of Beacons are the most progressive ones (The shifting structures of "High Class Slim Came Floatin' In" and "Gigantes", in particular) and many long-term Tortoise fans will probably praise the album as a "return to form," in terms of aesthetic. It was inevitable that one of the major 90's post-rock powerhouses would become this irrelevant by the end of the decade, but at least you could say that, in a musical climate where so many bands have stolen and improved upon their formula, Tortoise still haven't sacrificed their integrity, ideals and adventurism. Read more...
"How many times must a man look up
before he can see the sky?"