Globes
(Barsuk)
The Globes transform complexity into something accessible on this impressive debut. Here intricate rhythms jitter under chilled otherworldly vocals, translucent guitar textures blossom unexpectedly into off-kilter flourishes of proggy dexterity. Melodic pop lines may shoulder softly into view, but only to be shredded into prismatic, asymmetrical bits. If the best comparison is Radiohead that is partly because both bands are so unpredictable, so ready to fracture time signatures and break chord structures, so that the line you hear is subtly, intriguingly different from what you expect to hear.
The Globes came together in Spokane, Washington with the aim to use traditional rock instruments in unusual ways. Since the beginning the band has had a fairly conventional line-up, Kyle Musselwhite and Erik Walters on guitar, Sean McCotter on bass and Marcus Ourada on drums. (Musselwhite sings as well.) Yet also since the beginning, they have worked on breaking the confines of two-guitar-bass-drums expectations with intricate rhythms, sudden dynamic shifts and an approach that marries the romantic yearnings of guitar pop with a chilly postmodernist detachment. Future Self follows two EPs, the second of which, Sinter Songs, caused a fair amount of excitement among northwestern indie fans.
It's not hard to see why, based on Future Self, a disc that is smoothly self-assured as it balances on a tightrope. Musselwhite's eerie floating vocals display not a whisper of uncertainty as they glide over shrapnel-pocked, sharp-edged difficulties. The opening cut, "Haunted by Bears" is coolly, unruffledly gorgeous, building into outsized drama over drum rolls and guitar flourishes. "Stay Awake" posits a nervous cacophony of clock-ticking percussion, a clipped mania of eighth note guitars, a machine-age, sleep-deprived paranoia which is eased, soothed and humanized by the vocals. "I want nothing here/I want nothing more...from you," Walters sings with a big flourish on the "you." The song blossoms with sustained romantic yearning, finding color where all had been clamped down and affectless before.
The Globes put their best pop moves up front, but then, towards the end of the album, allow their most irregular, post-rocking tendencies to shine through. "Ghost"'s jittery guitar riff could have been pulled off a latter-day Tortoise album. Its abrasive mid-cut rhythmic interval makes no compromises with pop. "Japan," following just after, stutters to life in a dialogue between cowbell and snare. The guitars build up underneath in an indeterminant wash, and the vocals, when they come, are monochrome, a chant on mostly one note. Yet the plain-ness of the vocals, sets off shifting, shimmering beaded curtains of guitar. There is an abstraction here, a certain intellectual chill, but also sheer lyrical gorgeousness.
The Globes are still forming their sound, still feeling out the relationship between melody and experiment, still deciding how much to give freely to listeners and how much to make them work for. Hard to say what shape this band's Future Self will take, ultimately, but definitely worth keeping an eye on the process.
DOWNLOAD: "Stay Awake," "Haunted by Bears" "Japan" JENNIFER KELLY
