:: Track Listing

1. D Shallow
2. Eagle Rock
3. Dutch Fist
4. Night At The Knight
School
5. Int 1
6. Proud Turkeys
7. Int 2
8. Fly Paper
9. Int 3
10. Oh Yes Another Mother
11. White Mask
12. Chrome Caps
13. Mo Deeper

:: Record Review

Thee More Shallows

Book of Bad Breaks
(Anticon; 2007)

Rating: 65%
Combined Rating: 65%


Without a great drum sound what have you got? Some of the greatest rock records in history are slave to their drumbeat; funnelled through that driving heartbeat like hot blood through veins. Try to imagine "Be My Baby" without its perfect rhythmic foundation, the entirety of Surfer Rosa (1987) without Albini's cavernous boom. It's an essential element of muscularity, not simply the timekeeper but also the soul; its motivation, its relentless will to move. A great drumbeat will always be a strong asset if used appropriately, but it's almost always an element, a part of a whole. There's a reason why people hate drum solos.

The cold, distended blue reflections of Book of Bad Breaks are founded on great drum sounds; an array of close, palpable rhythms that drag its songs into traffic and beat them relentlessly forward. Whether they're enough on their own to elevate the songs higher is open to debate. Thee More Shallows take these monolithic tenants and force them to fight it out against central lethargic tones and a slew of sonic idiosyncrasies. While the drums attempt to bring a focus and spine to these songs, there's only so much they can do. When they are called upon to act as a structural frame to hang the aural experiments and textural touches running through Book of Bad Breaks upon, they bolt and underpin with undoubted skill, but also with varying degrees of success, mostly due to the scattershot nature of the accompaniment.

Despite their imposing, sparingly used rhythmical concrete, some of these songs can't hold their elements together tight enough to convince that there is a true vision guiding them. "Proud Turkey" pounds, ticks and seethes, yet it never really manages to persuade that there's an actual destination in sight. It's a playground of atmospherics pinned under a migrane buzz; guitars churn, clocks count the seconds, there's even a small classical aside to close, but nothing ever really finds its place. This is an issue that presents itself time and time again throughout the album. Whether it's an intentional device to complement the frayed lyrical approach is uncertain. There is a definite grasping quality to the lyrics, which arguably reflect in the scattershot musical tricks and filters. A warm anaesthetised feeling shades the vocals, but underneath gentle self-flagellation prevails: "And when the tooth breaks / You can bite down on your tongue / And keep a tight smile stitched across your practice face." The music acting as the shaking hands on the coffee cup, too over caffeinated and distracted to focus.

Book of Bad Breaks seems to be built on electronic tweaks and irritants: buzzing noises constantly stalking the melody, freak sounds scraping car keys down the paint work of its musical frame. "Oh Yes, Another Mother" presents itself as a quirky snapshot of family pressure stitched together with cold basement drums and tinnitus, and while it has a definite charm it's backbone of pounding and piercing noise detracts from the basic hook. Too busy, too many twitches. This reliance on noise isn't fundamentally a bad thing; without these oddities the album would probably sound quite rote and pedestrian, however so many of them seem to lack a distinct purpose, their inclusion serving to take the emphasis away from the central melodic drive of the song in question. When they coalesce with the basic structure, as is the case in "Eagle Rock," there's a distinct benefit akin to a haywire flock of birds suddenly finding formation and darting with unified direction. It's unfortunate then that so much of the album appears to haemorrhage noise, staggering towards a distant point without ever appearing to reach a chequered flag.

The more Book of Bad Breaks plays, the more it clings and forces you to concede to its charms; it's an admirable album, if not quite a great one. There's a discernible debt to Radiohead in the album's frazzled information strands. It's there in the amplified fluorescent hum and the droning catatonia of transport, the sound of the wind, cheek to cheek with concrete piles. But what it lacks is a little of their gentle humanity. There's a distinct deficit of release or empathy; everything is coloured with tension or a mask of coping. As a study in the human condition it offers the compression and tension of modern life without the catharsis; the heart is beating, but it's swamped in opiates. If the body draws breath but exists in fear and defeat, is that living? Thee More Shallows pose the question without providing an answer. Philip Guppy :: 18 May 2007 |