The tortoise beats the hare.
Chicago experimental rock group Tortoise have hatched their first record in nearly a decade, Touch. It is a difficult record to peg, as is the band’s modus operandi: expect the unexpected, define the undefinable. It is a beautiful record, a chaotic charismatic composite of vastly different genres and perspectives working toward one common end. The cinematic, eclectic nature of Touch makes for a channel-surfing sonic adventure, a sensation of combing hungrily through a crate of original film scores.
“Vexations” turns on our proverbial television to the sound of a spaghetti western. A steady kick beat drives the track forward like a steam locomotive along which plucky guitar tracks envisage outlaws racing on horseback. As with every song on the album, the opener undergoes rhythmic evolution, its percussion and melodies snowballing into intense grandeur. Tortoise prove themselves very tasteful as musicians, variably restraining and showcasing their virtuosity as the song demands. Things take a playful turn toward the synthetic in “Layered Presence,” which, alongside “Rated OG,” would feel right at home in a Castlevania game; they’re dusty, crunchy tracks packed with all the slickness and edge of a vampire-slaying whip. “Works and Days” adapts a gothic sense of wonder, the freshness of exploring a new fantastical and complex world. It makes one feel quite like Coraline or Dorothy, a newcomer to a sedimentary realm. “Eika” is Touch’s farthest journey into electronica, rendering us a Flynn in the sprawling Tron Grid of dancing synths and luminescent pads. “Promenade à Deux” progresses like a flower and blossoms ever more by the phase. Its cacophony of strings, melodic percussion and sultry electronic embellishments fill the song with nostalgia, tenderness, vivid, true emotion; something like the sweetest possible sunset. There is the buoyant “Axial Seamount” with its rising action. There is “A Title Comes,” with its sweet midwest guitars and doe-eyed gaze. There is the jazzy “Oganesson,” with its warmly reverberant bassline and then the deep and gritty “Night Gang,” a bold finisher that takes earned weight in its finality.
One may worry that Touch spreads its ambient jazz core too thin, dipping itself into ten wells too many. However, remarkably, it is as coherent as a project of its ambitions could ever hope to be. It is a journey of journeys, a singular mountain of many winding caves and tunnels. It is an anthology of masterfully mixed and mastered vignettes. What a gorgeous collage it is! How abundant with personality, how rich.
Tortoise are often hailed as progenitors of post-rock, artists who helped bring about a branching evolution of their genre. From the microcosm of Touch’s thrillingly progressive tracklist to the wider fusion of stylings the band has traded in for decades, that mission abides. Evolution. Further still can we venture into the avant-garde rabbit hole. Further still, we hope we shall.
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