Thrill Jockey
Post-rockers continue their anything-goes approach to instrumental music.
On Beacons of Ancestorship Tortoise’s first studio album in five years the band has assembled an impressive bunch of tracks that flirt with intense musical complexity but never stray too far from the steady foothold of the band’s anything-goes instrumental pop. Whereas some bands will spend albums eras or even careers cultivating and refining one specific sound these post-rockers bound frenetically between rhythmic and melodic styles often several times per song.
This is tidily exemplified by the album’s bookend tracks “High Class Slim Came Floatin’ In” and “Charteroak Foundation.” Both are highly polished romps through a half-dozen or so remarkably different themes but Tortoise manages to package each segment as a highly deliberate movement critical to the whole. Some transitions are abrupt even involving a few seconds of silence while others are gradual letting one sound seep in over several minutes until it overtakes everything else.
Foraging through these multi-part polyrhythmic epics may try the patience of some listeners but it’s undoubtedly a worthwhile experience. Whether it’s the huge metal riffs and twin lead guitars of “Prepare Your Coffin” or the clanking of a heavy chain throughout “The Fall of Seven Diamonds Plus One” a sultry number that would sound at-home on a David Lynch score Beacons manages to knit its diverse sounds into a motley but glorious tapestry that proves highly entertaining.
