Primer: Tortoise Part 1/Album of the Week: Tortoise

It would be impossible to calculate the impact that Tortoise's first two albums had on underground music. Though Millions Now Living Will Never Die frequently, and rightly, gets the nod for being one of the first true masterpieces of the post-rock genre, it came a full two years after Tortoise. There's something to be said for being first, and Tortoise were the first band to take the lessons of post-rock precursors Laughing Stock (by Talk Talk) and Spiderland (by Slint) and spin it all into something strikingly new, taking influences as disparate (yet fairly sympathetic) as dub, jazz, kraut-rock, soundtrack/film music, ambient, psychedelia, and minimalism.

Tortoise is a fascinating album to go back to because of how little it sounds like the Tortoise we know and love. At the time the band were often using two bassists at once; moreover, the album sounds like the monolithic work of a mysterious group of as little as one person but no more than three. Once the "Tortoise sound", as it were, became established on Millions Now Living... and TNT, returning to the sound of this album is interesting because of how simple it is. Tortoise is without a doubt the band's most ambient and minimalist release, with a restraint and sparseness rarely seen in future post-rock. At least for such sustained periods of times, that is.

As with most instrumental music, the greatness of Tortoise lies in the moods it establishes, and the evocative sounds and melodies that spill forth. This album isn't quite as borderline-austere as later Tortoise releases, so you usually get a sense of something other than a museum, where formerly dirty and fascinating pieces of history (swords, paintings, stuffed wild animals, etc.) are given a cleaned up and detached viewing by audiences. Not that Tortoise is noisy or messy. Rather, it simply strikes me as less assured and more willing to take risks than most Tortoise albums. 'Onions Wrapped In Rubber' is nearly seven minutes of very little happening, other than some stray percussion and electronic sounds. 'Ry Cooder' is a classic Tortoise piece that has an addictive bass-and-vibraphone melody as its centerpiece. 'His Second Story Island' is a contemplative tone poem for electric guitar. 'Magnet Pulls Through' is a perfect opener for such a deliberately paced and atmospheric album, threatening to erupt into a chorus or crescendo before collapsing back into taut drumming and rhythmic interplay with guitars.

As both the first album from one of the genre's biggest bands and its first significant release (again, not counting Spiderland and Laughing Stock), Tortoise, today, seems like such a small, unassuming piece of music. Even if later bands pushed this music into huge, majestic crescendos, overwhelming but pretty noise, or borderline-metal instrumental prowess, Tortoise still stands as a testament to how some revolutions start with a whisper instead of a roar.

On First Listen: Shellac- Excellent Italian Greyhound

One of my music buying habits is to just jump into a band I've never listened to at any point in their discography. I let fate and the record store decide where I'll begin with Do Make Say Think or, in this case, Shellac.

Shellac is an odd case, because I've technically heard a lot of work that Steve Albini has done as a producer--sorry, I mean, recording engineer--but I've never listened to anything he's personally done. I like the idea of his bands and the descriptions I've read, but never heard them.

Excellent Italian Greyhound is their latest album, and I could find a copy on vinyl, so here I am. Awesomely enough, the band includes a CD copy in the vinyl sleeve, though it's kind of a "fuck you" move because it's just a blank CD. So, then, I'll say "fuck you" back and listen to it on CD first.

The album opens with the spoken word driven and lengthy 'The End of Radio.' This is kind of a weird way to start an album. It reminds me a lot of Slint's Spiderland in terms of the dynamics, loud/quite/loud sections, and the plodding, exacting nature of the repetitive guitar. Obviously Steve Albini worked with Slint on their first album, Tweez and has been quite vocal about his love for Spiderland ever since its release, so the comparison makes sense. The song is, funnily enough, exactly what the title implies--someone broadcasting the last radio broadcast ever.

'Steady As She Goes' is not a cover of that Raconteurs song. Rather it's a pretty basic angry punk-ish song. Steve Albini (I'm assuming he's the singer on this song, anyway) yells the lyrics, but not in a death metal/screamo kind of way, thankfully. One thing I can say about this album thus far: it sounds as good as you'd expect from a notoriously finicky engineer. The instruments all sound clean and seperated and the vocals are mixed a bit lower than everything else. Which is the standard Albini aesthetic, and in Shellac's case, it certainly works.

'Be Prepared' is a math rocky "we have chops" workout. I've been thinking about why I don't know if I like or dislike this song, and I realize it's because this album doesn't make sense to me yet. It's going to take awhile to get into their way of doing things, because so far the songs are untraditional insofar as they don't have typical structures.

'Elephant' makes me think of Fugazi. The vocals remind me a bit of Ian MacKaye, especially the "repeat the lie" bit. So, then, Shellac sound like Slint mixed with Fugazi. Interesting.

'Genuine Lulabelle' is a long one. 9 minutes that trade between formless guitar minimalism, crunchy full band riffing, spoken word, and a strange dialogue between characters that reminds me of something off a Frank Zappa album. It actually reminds me of something off Gastr Del Sol's Crookt, Crackt, or Fly.

'Kittypants' is pretty damn good. Reminds me of what Slint might have released if they stayed together and released an all instrumental pop album. A nice, short instrumental that cleanses the palette.

'Boycott' is another angry, punkish song that reminds me of Fugazi. I love that pretty, upper register guitar line.

'Paco' is another instrumental, though it's longer and more varied than 'Kittypants.' Again, the closest comparison I can come up with is Slint, although faster and with more variety than that implies. One song from the end, I have to say that this album isn't as challenging and noisy as I imagined. Maybe I give too much credit to Albini for being difficult or experimental. But maybe I'm drawing too much of a conclusion from this, my sole listening experience.

'Spoke', the album closer, is an angry, screamed punkish number that doesn't remind me of Fugazi for once. It does, however, remind me of three dudes thinking it would be funny if they wrote a song where they could yell and scream a bunch of shit of no consequence and have mindless, fun backing music to pound out. And that's probably what happened, too.

So, my first Shellac experience. I don't feel especially positive or negative about the band so far. They certainly don't sound like much of anything I've heard before, except Slint and Fugazi, two bands that Shellac are at least familiar with, if not good friends with. I will say that it wasn't quite what I expect--a pleasant surprise.

Album of the Week: Talk Talk- Laughing Stock

I generally don't try to make significance out of coincidences, but it's difficult for me not to start this off without pointing out that, in 1991, Slint's Spiderland and Talk Talk's Laughing Stock were released. Post-rock being one of the most important and fascinating 'underground' genres to emerge in the mid-90s in both the UK and American music scenes, it's also important to note that Slint were an American band and Talk Talk were English. Also, listening to the two albums back to back, they don't sound much alike in the same way that no two post-rock bands will sound much alike, but still feel as though they occupy the same space.

Laughing Stock was the last and most experimental album released by Talk Talk. By this point, the band were almost fully a studio-only creature, giving the band plenty of time to craft this masterpiece. Drawing on a mix of jazz, ambient, and rock, Laughing Stock is a unique and, I daresay, magical piece of music. Nothing else sounds quite like it, from the angry crescendos of 'Ascension Day' to the half jazz/half krautrock beat of 'After The Flood' to the gorgeous but melancholic 'New Grass', built on top of pristine guitar chords. The deft and often unorthodox use of strings and horns only adds to the totally original and brilliant palette of sounds. If Spiderland didn't sound like anything other American bands were doing at the time of its release, let alone any bands anywhere, well, Laughing Stock didn't either.

I want to sort of pick up that thread and run with it, because as much as one can say the albums were influential on the post-rock genre, they still exist on their own. The Wikipedia entry for Laughing Stock mentions that reviews noted the album's kinship with In A Silent Way by Miles Davis, and that actually makes a lot of sense. In A Silent Way is a similar mix of jazz, rock, and ambient music, though it sounds entirely different. The same goes for Spiderland, which sticks more closely to a rock sound but approaches it from strange new angles via math rock, prog rock, minimalism, and so forth. Those looking to dig into the roots of post-rock (which, admittedly, go further back than 1991) will find in Spiderland and Laughing Stock touchstones for the sub-genre as well as elements and ideas they have never heard before.

This may just be my American perspective talking, but I feel as if Laughing Stock has been forgotten. Pitchfork actually ranked it above Slint's Spiderland on their 'Top 100 Albums of the 90s' feature 5 years back, but I don't think there's any doubt which album is better known or more listened to these days. Which is a shame, because there is so much to enjoy and dwell inside with this album. If music could ever be compared to a perfect dreamscape you wish you didn't have to wake up from, you could do worse than using Laughing Stock to argue it.