In efforts such as Climate Variations, Desormais
adroitly extracted atonal patterns and rich, often dolorous,
melodies from the bowls of their dying processors. Their
second fledgling, Iambrokenandremade renewed
the murky, clangorous momentum while also nurturing
the previously shy, stuttering beats into animated rhythmic
progressions and drawing the organic instruments out
from under clouds of distortion and frigid, snappy tones,
enabling them to foster a tangible, altogether colorful
work of some depth.
What their previous efforts did for the shoegazer genre,
adorning droves of digital hiccups and plangent textures
onto the skeins of melodic contour, this effort similarly
does for the jazz oriented realms of post-rock, soaping
the purring, cyclical guitars in a tepid pool of low
end hum, retexturalizing the mercurial percussion into
a dense weave of tremulant staggers and stretching out
the gossamer threads of trumpet until they ebb around
upper-register harmonic whistling. Sauntering from more
ambient, pensive compositions, rife with nocturnal noises
and luscious quaking lines conveying a weeping stasis,
to rustic musings that are content to develop angry
exclamations from gritty drumkits, the album offers
brief insights into the duos feeling of disconnection
and regret. The jarring strikes and hurried strokes
of percussion prove intrusive, however, and come to
detract from the potency of the textures, dragging the
compositions into a disheveled, at times incoherent,
state.
The debut from Jenna Robertson (aka Avia Gardner), which
reminds of a more calm, composed, classically oriented
Tujiko Noriko or Dorine_Muraille,
is also an engaging, if somewhat confused, effort. Although
largely a work of granular pulses, miked-up metallic
percussion and tape debris, these songs are also draped
in oceanic sonar signals, violin swells and wallowing
piano lines, resulting in an organic and free-flowing
series of events. Across pieces such as Dread And
Dreaming and If You Lose The Key, Throw Away
The House, Robertson’s voice is an alluring
coo, drifting dreamy and poetic atop trees of staccato
trumpet and light snare swats. Robertson’s arrangements
are not yet terribly distinctive - more often than not
they drift by in a pretty fashion and are forgotten
shortly thereafter - but her expressive, understated
sequences bring one to wonder what she might do with
more time and the space of a proper full-length. With
the final two songs standing as remixes by Tony Boggs,
More Than Tongue Can Tell is a brief introduction
into a promising artist.
Max Schaefer
Dead Letters To Lost Friends 3.2/5 / More Than
Tongue Can Tell 3.2/5 |
