Primer: Tortoise Part 5- It's All Around You

It only happens from time to time, but every once in awhile, you get the impression that a band is trying too hard. For whatever reason--trying to distance themselves from their past, trying to move their art forward, trying to rip it all up and start from scratch, trying to be something they're not--listening to an album of their's gives you the feeling that they're putting way too much thought and effort into an ultimately fruitless pursuit. It's as if the band is fighting their instincts and overthinking their approach when they don't have to.

On It's All Around You, Tortoise give off the impression that they're trying too hard. Which is paradoxical, because this is their least challenging and interesting album. You'd think one would be more apt to say they're trying too hard about the predecessor, Standards, which added new wrinkles to the band's sound and vision. But, no. It's All Around You is trying too hard in one very dire way: it's trying to sound like Tortoise, and ends up emphasizing most of their worst traits in the process.

For starters, there's the packaging. I normally don't bring this up in reviews, because who really cares, but...well, I own It's All Around You in the digipak format. The band did that clever/un-clever thing of making both the front and back of the CD the 'covers', so you aren't sure which one the true cover is. Moreover, the cover art is ridiculous nature scene garbage, the kind of crap you would see stillshots of on a digital cable music channel for 'easy listening.' At the same time, I don't get what the band are trying to say with the little story that's printed in the booklet about a girl picking strawberries. Personally, I take it as a metaphor for the album itself: "I know what I do not want", the girl says, "and I will not be happy with it."

On second thought, maybe it's not a metaphor so much as a direct summation of my feelings.

See, It's All Around You is Tortoise's worst album. It marks the first time I really thought Tortoise were just repeating themselves, but repeating themselves in worse ways. The production and playing are immaculate to a disappointing degree. I mean, I love Steely Dan as much as the next guy, but It's All Around You sounds mathematically precise, clinical, and energy-less when it shouldn't. The album's most interesting sequence--where the ponderous, searching 'Unknown', slowly unraveling like a good improvisation, suddenly screams into the noisy, drum heavy 'Dot/Eyes'--feels coldly calculated and without any balls. Allow me to explain: the Velvet Underground's noisy tendencies, that was 'having balls.' They sounded animalistic and human when they were cranking the volume and shoving their guitars at their amplifiers. Most modern noise/improv, by contrast, sounds 'without balls', because it's so intellectual and theoretically driven. Half of the time, you get the feeling like it's more a science or math experiment and not an attempt to create music and/or sonic 'art.'

There's no sense of danger, experimentation, or chance anywhere on this album. Too often it clings to elements of the past, mirrored in personality-less ways. 'On The Chin' sounds like a lost b-side that was re-recorded for the album, with a typically Tortoise slow moving rhythm, arbitrary use of vibes/marimbas, and the same guitar texture you've heard on pretty much every Tortoise album since TNT. Now, there is something to be said for having a distinctive sound, but if you just keep repeating yourself, that value is eventually gone. 'Five Too Many' assumes you'll stick around to listen to the aimless, noodling guitar "solo" that takes up most of its runtime, despite the fact that you've tired of this kind of anti-solo noodling long since if you've listened to any Tortoise album before. And where their sudden stops and just-as-sudden return to/re-working of a theme used to seem interesting and unique, now it just seem rote and boring--witness 'Salt The Skies', which is perhaps the best summation of this problem, and with this album in general. It starts out with a winding, circular ascent, then some rising tension via volume/more instruments and an increase in pace, then a sudden release of said tension in a crescendo, and finally a return to the original theme. As I said, this kind of thing used to be stunning, but now it's just...obvious.

It's been four years since Tortoise released anything new (I don't count their collaboration with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy), and I would like to think it had something to do with the warmed over music of It's All Around You, which more and more sounds like a stopgap, standing-still album. Whatever Tortoise might have in store for a future release, I hope they learned some valuable lessons from this album and the reception it received. It's not terrible, but only because it plays it too safe to be terrible. Playing it safe isn't automatically damning, but when a band has four other albums that are perfectly serviceab--ok, no, they're outright better, you kind of have to wonder what the point of a boring, unchallenging fifth album is. Unless you really, really love Tortoise, you can easily skip this one.

Primer: Tortoise Part 4- Standards

There's an experimental, devil-may-care attitude to Tortoise's Standards that seems sorely missing in the rest of their catalog, and I'm not entirely sure why that is. But there is something about the album that just feels more lively and interesting than usual, from the way songs flow together to the conciseness of the album itself to the way new ideas and melodies come much more rapidly than they do on other Tortoise albums. It has the energy, the ebb and flow, of a masterfully planned/played live show, taking its time with the slower/mellower bits but not losing a listener's interest in the process.

Largely, the greatness of Standards--at least, the greatness I see in it--can be attributed to the way in which it was recorded. Where the overly long, occasionally kind-of-boring TNT was mostly written, improvised, and heavily edited in the studio over the course of a year, Standards was largely written beforehand and then embellished a bit in the studio in a much shorter period of time. Strange, then, that Standards is Tortoise's most electronic album. I don't mean that it's their techno album, just as TNT wasn't their jazz album. Instead, the inspiration is just more pronounced than usual. Standards features rhythms equally alongside the melodies, mixing the drums and bass as high as the other instruments, or, as is the case with the anomalous 'Monica', which doesn't sound much like Tortoise at all, borrowing a dreamy, synth-pop sound (with either a vocoder or a talkbox on a guitar) that is more readily found on a Daft Punk album.

Tortoise's weakness as a band is their precarious balance between being intriguing instrumental music and sleep inducing, immaculately played easy listening. This is something that came up a lot in reviews of their last album, It's All Around You, which brought little new ideas to the table and seemed content to coast on good graces. It may not prove as bad as my memory, but it's such a stark contrast to Standards, an album that helped pull the band back from the edge in my book. The tonal, textural, melodic, and rhythmic palette of the band has never been as wide and yet as deep as it is here. Though I think it may be the album on which Tortoise's patented vibraphones/marimbas make the least appearances, their sparing use makes them seem all the more unique and purposeful. Moreover, the band neither fall back on old habits nor the lazy dynamics of their post-rock contemporaries. Granted, I like many other post-rock bands, but you can sort of characterize most of the songs as being quiet-to-loud-and-back-again crescendo races. At the same time, when Tortoise do go back to the well for their minimalist interludes ('Firefly' could easily have fit unto TNT) or repetitive structures ('Eden 1' keeps the same grinding beat, though it fades to the background when ponderous guitars pick out a duet), it's never for very long. Finally, Standards has, outside of Millions Now Living Will Never Die, the best pacing and sequencing of any Tortoise album. A few of the songs do that segue thing that always gets my rocks off ('Seneca' into 'Eros', 'Firefly' into 'Six Pack') and in general, a deft balance is struck between intense exploratory Tortoise grooves (at least, what passes for a Tortoise groove anyway) and the chillier ambient spacey stuff.

One hopes that, after: 1) the lukewarm reception It's All Around You received 2) compiling the odds and ends boxset A Lazarus Taxon 3) performing Millions Now Living Will Never Die at different musical festivals over the past 2 or 3 years, the band were reminded of what made them great in the first place. One need look no further than Standards for what exactly Tortoise is capable of, an album that both sounded like Tortoise and added new pages to their recipe book at the same time.

Album of the Week: The Grateful Dead- Workingman's Dead

I've often heard it said that the Dead are one of those bands you either love or hate, yet I find myself somewhere between these two extremes. For the record, this has nothing to do with their live stuff, either. I was very heavily into Phish until recently, so I'm not averse to lengthy improvisations and wading through 3 or 4 CD live releases. The problem with the Dead for me is a combination of how long they were around and how hit-or-miss they could be. The former because I much prefer their first decade of existence, and the latter simply because of the ephemeral nature of live shows, particularly for jam bands. At their worst, they could be an incredibly sluggish and boring band, but at their best, they could truly transcend. So I neither love nor hate the Dead as a general rule. When they're good, they're actually great, but when they're bad, they're embarassing to listen to.

With all that out of the way, I wish Workingman's Dead got the kind of love that American Beauty does. Both albums represent the Dead at the point in their career when they embraced their roots as a jugband, bringing in country, folk, and (stronger) blues influences. Along with this came the incredible vocal harmonies they learned from their friends Crosby, Stills, and Nash (and maybe Young, too). Yet I've always thought of Workingman's Dead as the more successful of the two albums, not in terms of its songs, but for its entirely believable transformation of the Dead from an acid dropping, psychedelic, improvisational, and rockin' live band to a hard drinkin' band of the people.

See, American Beauty is a stellar album, but Workingman's Dead completely nails what it's trying to be. Trey Anastasio of Phish remarked during a Charlie Rose interview that the Dead were the greatest American band ever, and I think what he was getting at was their ability to take all the entirely American musical idioms and put their own spin on them. Moreover, with the songs on Workingman's Dead, the band created songs that are so startlingly close to classic American folk songs, blues, ballads, and country work songs that I didn't realize until recently that they weren't covers or adaptations. Instead, the band were crafting new myths about old heroes (like Casey Jones), old folk tales, and, most pleasingly, old standard topics like women, drinking, and hard jobs. If American Beauty is the kind of album that everyone knows and loves, and you can drink/sing along to with friends, then Workingman's Dead is the album you put on in order to drink alone to.

While not the quintessential Dead album (I think Europe '72 has the best mix of excellently played 'songs' and deft improvisation), Workingman's Dead is a damn near perfect American album. Weirdly enough, for being an album so connected with the distant past, it feels appropriately classic 40 years later, as if they knew that the songs they were making during this era were destined to become staples in the same way that the old songs they grew up on were. Intentional or otherwise, Workingman's Dead is one of the finest albums ever recorded, and even if you think you hate the Dead, you might be surprised how much you love this.

Video: Grandaddy- Nature Anthem

Grandaddy are one of those bands that I just plain don't get. They're the sort of indie rock band who release a handful of albums before breaking up. They're the sort of indie rock band who sound a lot like other, better bands--in this case, the Flaming Lips and a more rural, less experimental, American Radiohead. They're also the sort of indie rock band who have a solid 'greatest hits' disc of good material and a whole bunch of fair-to-forgettable crap. So what I don't get is why people seem so enamored with the band. They're merely OK in my book, but even a compilation of their best material still wouldn't excite me, because they're more alchemists than innovators: they take the sounds of great bands they like and put a bit of a spin on it but bring nothing new to the table.

Also, I share a last name with the lead dude, and that's always kind of bugged me because I feel like I'm usually borrowing from others instead of writing things that are original and have their own unique voice.

Anyway, I don't like this video. Or this song. It's an example of the worst tendencies of Grandaddy, to steal from the Flaming Lips and pass it off as their own. For the record, Wayne Coyne may write some clunkers here or there, but he never would write a saccharine ditty about woodland animals. Furthermore, the Flaming Lips usually--usually--save the silly animal costumes for their stage show. Further damning evidence is Grandaddy's 'Now It's On', which is pretty similar both visually and sonically to the Flaming Lips song/video 'Turn It On.'

Primer: Tortoise Part 3- TNT

While there's no hard and fast rule or set of rules about what makes a great album cover, one kind of cover always appeals to me: the ambiguous one. I don't mean abstract or minimalist. In fact, it's hard for me to say precisely what I mean because by its very nature the ambiguous album cover doesn't fit into a category. Rather, I like to explain it as the kind of record cover that captures your imagination but provides no explanation or context for the music contained therein. Tortoise's TNT is a cover that will stick me for the rest of my life. It's a simple, tossed off doodle done by a band member during the recording sessions, but with its "Casper-the-Friendly-Ghost-with-lazy-eyes-and-weird-stink-line-breath" character offering both the band's name and album title, I was endlessly intrigued with the album before even listening to it all those years ago.

I've probably written about this before in another context, but there's something to be said for the purity of blind musical discovery. Though nowadays if there's reviews of an album out before I hear it, I can't stop myself from reading them, I used to be able to arrive at various bands without knowing precisely what I was in for. I think back to the first phase of my love affair with music, when I pawed through my parents' record collection, picking out ones with covers that caught my eye or had band names that sounded familiar. I think about the sadly few times I've done this since while at my local record store, picking an album blindly on the way it looks, the way the name kind-of-rings-a-bell, the names of the songs, etc.

The point I'm too-slowly getting to is that Tortoise are a band who always manage to release albums that give me that same sense of blind musical discovery. Even though I know who the members are, at the same time, I don't. Not really. I know they're all involved in various other bands and that they're from Chicago, but even after seeing them in various interviews and live clips on YouTube, I'm still no closer to knowing them. And that's for the best, because with a band like Tortoise, their motivations, personal demons, love lives, and biographies don't matter. I suppose a good deal of this has to do with their music being entirely instrumental, but even their song titles, album titles, and album covers are pretty ambiguous. Hell, even the name of the band is. The first time I listened to TNT, I wasn't even sure if I was listening to the album "TNT" by a band called "Tortoise", or the album "Tortoise" by a band called "TNT."

TNT, then. This album is the center point around which Tortoise's entire discography revolves, being a minor turning point for the band both personnel and sound-wise. TNT was recorded over the course of a year, covering the period between the end of the touring for Millions Now Living Will Never Die and finishing up with the departure of David Pajo from the band. Interesting, then, how little Pajo I've detected on the album over the years. Maybe I associate him too much with the sound of Slint, but TNT very obviously belongs to newly recruited guitarist Jeff Parker, who comes from a jazz background. This isn't to say that TNT is a jazz album, but it definitely has a sound that edges closer to guitar-based jazz (think Pat Metheny, but not as Easy Listening as some of you might foolishly think this implies) than previous albums. Oddly, there's also a more pronounced electronic influence, especially on 'The Equator', though this is much more obvious on Standards. In short, TNT is a transitional album, and like most transitional albums, it brushes up against greatness but ultimately misses 'classic' status.

The problem--and I hesitate to use that word, because I do like TNT--is that this album is too long. That may seem like a positive to some people, because in this age of endless playlists and track skipping, too much of a favorite band is never too much. But, as a singular, contained piece of music, TNT is too unwieldly to sit down and listen to. At 64 minutes in length, it's two tracks too long. I usually get lost somewhere in the middle of it, and while I really enjoy albums that I can get lost inside of and re-connect with later when my attention wanders back, it's also the hallmark of an album that isn't engaging all the way through. Tortoise may be one of my favorite bands, but the kind of criticisms that are leveled at them by haters--they're boring, noodle-y, or even too 'safe'--speak to their ability to constantly fit inside the ambient music ideal that Brian Eno set out. That is to say, music that functions just as well as being the 'wallpaper' of a room as it does the center of a listener's attention. This is a nice way of saying that sometimes I get bored of TNT halfway through and start to fall asleep, or I get up to do something else while it's still playing. Like, take a leak, read a book, figure out what I'm going to eat for dinner, etc.

So, then, what to change about TNT to make it better?? I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with its overall sound, so that's not it. After all, you're very likely to love a good deal of this album. 'TNT' is a fantastic opener, with a great jazzy drums-and-horn section vibe to it; 'Ten-Day Interval' is a hypnotic showcase for the band's trademark vibes/marimbas; 'Almost Always Is Nearly Enough' sounds like an IDM remix of a Tortoise song without the need for any remixing because it already sounds that way. However, the album needs to be edited down somewhere, and were I to choose the requisite two tracks to trim this album down to get it into fighting shape, I would have to prune 'Four-Day Interval' and the unwieldly titled 'In Sarah, Mencken, Christ And Beethoven There Were Women', a combined 12-or-so minutes of music; the former for being a plodding, minimalist revision of the vibe/marimbas theme from 'Ten-Day Interval' and the latter for being seven minutes long with not nearly enough development. Keep in mind these aren't bad songs, per se, but they are totally unnecessary. They are guilty of making the middle of album so...not "boring", but...close. I'm almost positive that somewhere out there, some Tortoise fans are gnashing their teeth (or their beaks...?? tortoises have beaks, not teeth, right??) and saying that those two songs are among their favorites, but so it goes.

TNT may be the reason that I got into Tortoise, but it's probably my second to least favorite of their's. Yes, it ultimately comes down to personal taste, but TNT has always felt like a 'bogged down' album to me. It took a year to record, the band had six members at the time, and it's too long. While it doesn't have the "trying too hard" vibe that my least favorite Tortoise album does (that would be It's All Around You), and while it also is still pretty great, it's just not essential in my book.

The Complainer: CD Packaging

Though I will admit outright that I'm a iconoclastic vinyl record diehard, I also own a lot of CDs. I don't outright hate the CD format; it's a necessary evil in this strange era where we're transitioning to digital only music while vinyl record sales are simultaneously up. I would argue this is largely because CDs are the unfortunate mid-point between the convenience and portability of digital music and the classy, fun-to-look-at-and-listen to record format. Also, many new releases of vinyl smartly include codes for free digital downloads. But I digress.

This is not an entry in The Complainer series wherein I eviserate the CD format itself. I don't prefer it, but I've got too many CDs already, and I don't have the time/money to replace them all with vinyl/digital versions. This is also not about the ubiquitous, annoying stickers that are on the tops of CDs. Everybody in the world, everyone who was ever born and possibly could be born in the future, hates those. Rather, this is about the different packages that CDs come in, and what I dislike about them. Note: I'm not going to go into every single CD package style, since I don't own every weird little variation there is. Also, stuff like the 'slimline' CD cases and the lame paper sleeves are self evidently crappy.

The Jewel Case

I would wager that a good 90-95% of the CDs you own are in this kind of packaging. As far as I know, it was the 'original' package that CDs came in when first introduced in the mid 80s, and has always been the most common, though the Digipak format is probably next in line. My issue with this format is that, even though it's the most durable--after all, it's almost entirely made out of plastic--it has a propensity for getting cracks in the cover, as well as the frequent breaking of the little plastic 'arm' bits that snap the clear plastic lid unto the bottom tray. It's up to debate as to whether a CD versus a record, minus all packaging, will be more durable, but I personally own many CDs with ugly cracks on the lid and/or no arms so that they fall off if I turn them upside down.

Digipak

Were you to sit down and devise a way to combine the vinyl record sleeve with the CD jewel case, you'd probably end up with the Digipak. This package is essentially the bottom tray of a CD jewel case glued inside a miniature-gatefold record sleeve. It does have the appeal of a record sleeve--you only see the cover image, and not the black bar of a jewel case next to it--but it also has that package's weakness. That is to say, cardboard, as sturdy as it can be, still bends really easily. I'm sure some people take immaculate care of their CDs, but I use them as a mobile/travel music format, and almost all of my CDs in Digipak have bent corners. That may sound needlessly nitpicky, but that's what this column is all about.

The Double Jewel Case

I debated whether to even put this seperately, since its flaws are similar to the standard jewel case. However, this allows me to single out the ugliness of the double jewel case format. It may allow record companies to put booklets and/or extensive liner notes inside, but it just doesn't look very elegant. I also want to take a running stab at the "regular jewel case, with an awkward foldout tray to fit 2 or 3 CDs inside" format. These foldout trays are ridiculously fragile, and trying to use them is begging for the CDs to fall out of the center grip things.

The Jewel Case with Slipcover

Possibly because someone realized Digipak was flimsy but jewel cases didn't showcase the cover art enough, record companies began to issue CDs in a standard jewel case format, but with a cardboard slipcover that went over them. I'm of two minds on this format. It solves the issues I have with the eventual wear and tear of the Digipak with the eventual ugliness of the jewel case...but I never keep the damn things on the CDs. Call me lazy (go ahead, I'll be over here trying to reach the TV remote with my foot) but these slipcovers are a hassle to get off. It seems like every one that I have fits too tightly to come off easily. So, I've got a pile of these things filed away somewhere, and I'm back with the problem of jewel cases.

The Boxset

While the actual look, dimensions, and materials vary greatly, the CD format did give birth to one magnificent new musical format: the boxset. True, artists were releasing triple and quadruple (possibly even more, I confess that I don't know) record albums during the heyday of the format, but the idea of a "multiple disc" release beyond a 'double album' was something that really came to to prominence in the CD era. It was simply more cost effective to cram so much music unto so many CDs even if the packaging that housed it was more expensive as a byproduct. The above pictured boxset--a live, 6 CD release by Miles Davis--would have spanned at least as many records and cost probably double. I can't technically complain about this CD style, since each one is different, but I don't really want to. They may be far less portable than a typical single or double CD release, but they aren't supposed to be.

Whatever All These Are (The Rest)

Frequently, artists decide it would be really funny if they released their new CD in a weird package. They may look more aesthetically pleasing than a typical jewel case, but because they usually involve Digipak-style containers and/or cheap, slipcover style packaging that 'holds' the CD with a booklet, they're just plain bad. The Bob Dylan ones pictured above are awful, because the other side of the package is a gaping whole, which you're guaranteed to constantly spill the booklet and CD case out of because there's nothing holding them in. Most frustratingly of all, these sundry other CD packages usually have limited edition or short-lived-and-doomed-to-go-out-of-print connotations to them, like the Broken Social Scene album shown above that came with a bonus EP on CD, or the (not pictured) Tortoise boxset, which is like a cardboard version of the container some leather wallets come in, with 3 CDs and 1 DVD packaged in flimy cardboard/paper sleeves. Give me a break.

Primer: Tortoise Part 2/Album of the Week: Millions Now Living Will Never Die

I've always wondered something about this album, and I think it gives insight into how Tortoise operates. The liner notes to Millions Now Living Will Never Die reveal that Bundy K. Brown wrote a portion of 'The Taut and Tame', but curiously he was no longer in the band by this point. Instead, sometime between the release of the first album and this, he had left the band, and David Pajo (formerly of Slint) joined. The addition of an honest-to-goodness guitarist changed the Tortoise sound, but at the same time the proposition of Brown writing part of a song on which he doesn't even play speaks volumes for how Tortoise operates.

Furthermore, I recently re-watched the DVD portion of the A Lazarus Taxon boxset and was reminded how democratic the band is. Effectively a faceless band, their de-facto leader has always been perceived as John McEntire, but only because he engineers/produces the band's albums. During concerts--and I'm guessing for the recording of albums--the band switches instruments pretty frequently. All of this gives you the correct impression that Tortoise is not a band where ego ever comes up. Listening to their albums, which are marvels of restraint, you realize that every instrument is used for a reason. Nobody is playing something because they have to always be doing something otherwise they get mad. Members are content to lay off for a bit and let someone else take center stage; not in an improvisational or soloing kind of way, but in a melodic/rhythmic/textural kind of way.

Millions Now Living Will Never Die is an album I have no reservations about calling iconic. From its provocative title to its evocative album cover (schools of fish are a pretty good match for the imagery that the music sometimes creates in your head) to its unique pacing (more on this in a bit), the album frequently and rightly ends up on many best album lists, particularly as a tent pole of the post-rock genre. Clearly I love the album, and while I could conceivably see people not liking it who like post-rock, it's still undeniably one of the landmark releases of said genre. After all, I'm not the biggest fan of either of the Joy Division albums, but they're still landmarks for post-punk. I think you have to hear them to understand the genre.

The first two Tortoise albums are pretty strange when you go back to them. Their self titled debut, I've recently learned, didn't actually have any guitars at all. Instead, they used two bassists in interesting ways to cover up for it. At the same time, Tortoise was a fairly ambient and minimalist release. It does sound like Tortoise, but it's a very different band than the one now in existence. Millions... took a bassist away and added the unique guitar stylings of ex-Slint member David Pajo. Moreover, it's the odd man out in terms of its pacing: it has the least songs of any Tortoise album, and it has the single longest song from any of their albums in 'Djed', which at 20 minutes is more than twice as long as the nearest contender. (Side note to obsessive fans: yes, I know 'Cliff Dweller Society' is 15 minutes long, but it's not on an album). It's an anomaly in the band's discography to be sure, though because Tortoise albums are instrumental and sound the way they do, songs frequently flow together; another simpler way to put it is that Tortoise albums are meant to be listened to as a whole, so suck it up and give it your time, maaaaan.

As I discussed in my review of their debut, Tortoise's genius was to take the first stirrings of post-rock from Talk Talk's Laughing Stock and Slint's Spiderland, combine them together, and add their own spin to the whole thing. While Laughing Stock began from jazz, folk, and even classical music, and Spiderland began from prog rock, math rock, and borderline metal, Tortoise met these origins at a fork in the road, carrying behind them a cartload filled with dub, film music, electronic music, ambient, krautrock, and various world music influences (mainly in their use of vibraphones/marimbas and other assorted percussion). Though Tortoise is underrated, I would argue that it was on Millions Now Living Will Never Die where Tortoise really began to sketch out their own musical idiom and identity.

The album begins with the monolithic 'Djed', which is as good as you've been told. Assuming one were pressed to come up with a list of 'must hear' post-rock songs, I think you'd have to include 'Djed', or at least consider it as a prime contender for essential songs by Tortoise. Allow me to digress for a moment: I've always been puzzled by the title. Did the band mean for it to be taken as "DJ'd", as in a DJ, or pronounced in some weird accent like "duh-jed" or simply "jed" with a silent D?? In retrospect, I assume it was a nod to the way the song, like a proper DJ mixing and seguing songs together, stitches various mini-songs and ideas together in one epic collage. It is indeed a towering achievement for the post-rock genre, one that the listener should pause and savor like a cup of tea.

I must also give the rest of the album its due. 'Glass Museum' is an appropriately titled, immaculately played piece for chamber musicians, adding a nice dole of grit and rock during the section that starts around the three minute mark. 'A Survey' is a calm, ambient, bass driven throwback to the first album, while 'The Taut and Tame' is a peppy, crunchy workout for clattering percussion and distorted guitar. 'Dear Grandma and Grandpa' emerges from a haze of synth washes, and as the album's least guitar-centric, free floating piece, it recalls the more lucid, dreamlike sections of 'Djed' before seguing smoothly into closer 'Along the Banks of Rivers' on the back of a snare drum roll. This song is easily the band's most filmic, and reminds me of something that might be played at the end of a James Bond film from the late 60s, with its spy/noir-ish digital delay guitar, textural Rhodes piano accents, and jazzy, cymbal heavy percussion. For what it's worth, it's also a good song to drop unto the end of mixtapes as a palette cleanser or way to finesse an uneven time ratio between sides A and B.

One of the things I love about certain bands is their ability to combine the experimental and the accessible as well as the grounded/earthy and spacious/spacey. I'm thinking specifically of albums like Miles Davis's Bitches Brew, albums which wrap these seemingly conflicting musical approaches into one giant tapestry of brilliance. I'm not trying to directly compare the two, but Tortoise's Millions Now Living Will Never Die is similarly effective as Bitches Brew at challenging the listener with music that contains the above, in equally conflicting and complementary ways. Millions... is a fantastic album, and one that influenced many as well as being among those rare cases where a band is able to distill its influences in such a way to sound wholly original and show us musty ol', jaded music critics that we haven't heard it all before.