Tortoise Return with a Beacon for a New Generation

Tortoise has been unnervingly quiet for years and post-rock has been reeling from it. Audiences all over the world have been holding their breath for three years of potential silence in waiting for this album, and Beacons of Ancestorship, the band’s sixth full-length release in its 15-year career, is of epic proportion.
The album opens strong with “High Class Slim Came Floatin’ In,” a piece that seems intent on never settling on specific hooks, but manages to be memorable, a jumble of inspiring pieces placed in just the right order. It becomes directionless, but seems to pick itself back up toward the end.

There is no doubt that the best track on Beacons of Ancestorship is the morbidly titled “Prepare Your Coffin.” Somehow, Tortoise has managed to develop a polyrhythmic masterpiece that sounds like a cross between very technical music and a Super Nintendo soundtrack.

Tortoise relies on polyrhythmic patterns less than their post-rock peers, using a more constantly shifting melody to drive their compositions to plains of bizarre musical experience. They are a band that never seems stifled, and their creativity is endless. Beacons of Ancestorship is not an album that can be listened to once. To truly appreciate it takes multiple listens and it gets more comprehensible every time. Trust Tortoise to restore bizarreness to post-rock, even after such a break.