H E A R__I T

"TNT"
Tortoise
(576k)

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T A B L E__T A L K

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R E C E N T L Y

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The Miles Davis Quintet
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Sarge
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Robbie Robertson
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BROWSE THE
MUSIC ARCHIVES

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V O W E L L

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I N T E R V I E W

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By Cynthia Joyce
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(03/19/98)

t o r t o i s e . . . . . T^NT . . . . .THRILL JOCKEY

BY MARC WEIDENBAUM
Seriously -- were you to bet your career on blending genres as disparate as rock, fusion, electronica and Jamaican dub, could you adopt a better mascot than Aesop's four-footed archetype of patience?

Fans of adventurous pop music know the name Tortoise is taken by a Chicago-based vocal-free quintet that has achieved this goal several times over since its first single was released back in 1993. On a handful of albums, dozens of singles and select compilations (notably "Macro Dub Infection"), Tortoise have not so much augmented rock music as fully absorbed untraditional instruments and suitelike formats into a formidable blend of improvisation and composition. The success of the band's last album, "Millions Now Living Will Never Die," helped introduce the term "post-rock" into the pop music vernacular.

Tortoise's new full-length, "TNT," opens with a smattering of free drumming, gentle snare rolls and brushed cymbals, suggesting the arrival of a full jazz quartet, or maybe a solo saxophone -- certainly anything other than the melancholic rock-guitar melody, à la Pavement, that does follow. Jazz ensembles often prod a familiar signal ("Body and Soul" or some other hotel-bar standard) from a few moments of overturelike noise. The difference here is that Tortoise cohere without the entitlements of a jazz group -- no familiar songbook, no standardized instrumentation, no verse-chorus format.

The scant liner notes of "TNT" don't help the situation, but a close listen (along with a visit to the band's Web site) reveals, for starters, more instruments than musicians (trumpet, lap steel, marimba, computerized percussion, etc., along with the traditional rock parts). No one plays just one instrument, lending the group its open, leaderless dynamic. And with most doubling on drums, it's a group in which everyone is comfortable in a supporting role.

The divisions between the dozen tracks are about as certain as the divisions between genres that Tortoise so easily dismisses. Seven minutes after it begins, the opening track fades out with a different drum pattern than it started with, a light gallop lasting a half minute into the album's second track. At the end of a song titled "Almost Always Is Nearly Enough," constructed from vocal samples, a jittery digital drum pattern forms in time to provide the basis for the song that follows.

The effect of this endless invention can be disorienting. Pity the DJ who drops a piece (song? composition? movement?) titled "Ten-Day Interval" on listeners. Its four minutes of radiant interplay between marimba, vibraphone, xylophone and keyboards brings to mind the pulsing soundtracks of Philip Glass and Tangerine Dream, the early work of Terry Riley and the ritual Balinese gamelan music that inspired them all. But by song's close, the layering of metronomes has been supplanted by ham-radio static and bass-end piano, which roll into the subsequent track.

For all Tortoise's resourcefulness, "TNT" doesn't always work. A lapse into unadorned dub ("The Equator") has that certain Casio flavor. A King Crimson quote on the closing track proves as jarring as the Herbie Hancock riffs that colored the band's self-titled 1994 album. Furthermore, when you invoke whole genres, you invite not only comparison (which generally favors Tortoise's able musicians) but all the attendant connotations. The lithe threading of guitars throughout summons not only the Grateful Dead but its spawn, Phish (that's not a compliment).

Of course, if "TNT" did cohere entirely, Tortoise wouldn't be playing experimental music. It would be simply working a well-defined genre. The demands "TNT" makes of its listeners suggest a slow route to stardom at best, but the sureness of these elegant instrumental songs suggests the band's here for the long haul.
SALON | March 26, 1998

Marc Weidenbaum is editor in chief of CitySearch7.com.