Tortoise – Beacons of Ancestorship Review
Tortoise’s new album, Beacons of Ancestorship came out on the 23rd this month. It’s been a pretty anticipated album, which can be asserted through the numerous MP3 reviews of “Prepare Your Coffin” (click here here to read ours) during the past few months.
It’s been a long way since TNT, possibly their most acclaimed album in a time where post-rock was too underground to be appreciated. The need for traditional raw instruments are almost nonexistent, something that has been said to be since the dawn of the new millennium for our ‘post-rock’ veterans. Instead, these have been replaced by synths as introduced in Standards (2001)–and lots of ‘em. Creating a more space-rock, dub heavy sentiment, Tortoise have really stuck it out with this one.
If you read our MP3 review, I mentioned that, at that point, I hadn’t listened to any Tortoise beyond TNT, an album I did enjoy immensely. If you’re a fan of Tortoise, you’ll know post-TNT, Tortoise took a turn for the more eclectic, increasingly using electronic means in their subsequent work. They became more abstract and less familiar. So unfamiliar, I would say, that it would be almost impossible to imagine that Beacons of Ancestorship and TNT were released by the same band.
Have Tortoise always been this weird?
Beacons of Ancestorship is probably one of the most schizophrenic albums I have ever listened to. While it has its consistent elements in terms of instrumentation, I can’t even think of how it could be summed up as a whole. Rhythms are intertwined in each track, coming off as awry, but strangely enjoyable. Some tracks present a traditional melody, others have no apparent melodies at all.
“High Class Slim Came Floatin’ In” is the first and longest track of the album, closing in on a little more than eight minutes. Some first tracks help a listener brace themselves for the rest of the album. I’m not even sure if this track does that. It implements all of Beacons of Ancestorship–dense and distorted space synths reminiscent of Frank Zappa, with constant changing melodies and rhythms. It’s heavily progressive in nature, too much to handle at first.
Then it rushes into “Prepare Your Coffin,” probably the most normal song in the entire album, if only in that it regresses into a more conventional rock sound than the rest of the album. You think you’ve got used to the sound…it’s starting to sound pretty normal–and then, “Northern Somethings” hits you. In its two and a half minutes of life, it is already capable of–to go back to elementary school terms–smooshing the shit out of my brain with its annoying melody that sounds like a bunch of aliens having an orgy that isn’t very enjoyable. It seems, however, that “North Somethings” seemed to brace me for the rest of the album better. It just keeps getting stranger and stranger from here.
Yes, while some tracks can manage keeping a tune, they still reek of some sort of strangeness, whether it be the eclectic tone, messed up rhythms, or seemingly imperfectly weaved instrumentation.
Each song seems to represent a different style altogether, making the album seem more inconsistent as a whole. One song may be more apparently dub (”Monument Six One Thousand”), another may be reminiscent of old 80s Brit punk with an electronic element (”Yinxianghechengqi”), and another may sound like it could have come off a Western movie soundtrack (”The Fall of Seven Diamonds Plus One”). Different sounds are just scattered throughout this album, with the only backbone probably being that inconsistency is the key.
I think that it just needs to be accepted that you can’t find any certain regularity throughout this album in order for it to be appreciated for what it is. Overall, it is a pretty good album with interesting traits that cannot be wholly ignored. Perhaps that is the beauty of Tortoise, after all.
MP3s:
Tortoise – Prepare Your Coffin
Tortoise – Minors
Tags: album
