Third release from Bay Area's Not To Reason Why. Features 3 songs totaling 30 minutes. Instrumentation: Piano, Drums, Guitar Bass, Violin and Flute.
Review From The Silent Ballet:
Score: 8/10
This album makes me happy.
Why? The musicianship is tight, the riffs are catchy, and the (light) singing is endearing. The cover is divine, a riff on the illuminated manuscripts of olde. The mood is upbeat. The tracks contain a natural flow. The concept is borne out by the song titles ("Good Morning", "Good Afternoon", "Good Night"). The music is riveting wherever it is played (home stereo, computer, car). I blasted it while driving to my parents' house on Easter, the warmest day of the year (85F). The sun was out, the windows were down, and the traffic - in my area only - was light.
This is not to say that the album possesses supernatural powers - although the Pan-like creature at the bottom left of the cover and the giant flame-headed, man-eating swan above it are certainly the stuff of fairy tales. The litany is instead meant to illustrate the myriad reasons one might end up enjoying an album, some of which have nothing to do with the sound. Flip the script for a moment, and consider an album that sounds good, but whose cover is repulsive, whose tracks are in the wrong order, and whose titles make no sense. Now imagine listening to that album while stuck in traffic so bad that a valuable appointment is missed. We are creatures of association. But when the elements line up - especially those within a band's control - the stage is set for magic to occur.
The Book of Hours is clearly, confidently, contagiously post-rock: not a blend of genres, but a box of guitar, bass, drums and piano, with a guest appearance by the violin. Don't like loud-quiet-loud? Go somewhere else. Don't like crescendo and catharsis? May you be eaten by a giant flame-headed swan. This album perfectly illustrates how powerful the genre can be when the performers are unabashed in their devotion to its key elements.
Approximately fifty post-rock albums have already been released this year. So what makes this album stand out from the pack? Why would I rate it higher than, say, Take Care, Take Care, Take Care, which I also own and greatly enjoy? The Book of Hours is not ponderous or experimental or groundbreaking. But it's also not pretentious or self-indulgent or uneven. Three songs, and we're done - no padding, no noodling, no fat. Because of its brevity (30 minutes), it's not afraid to go big, packing multiple high points into every song in a manner not heard since Talons' Hollow Realm.
On Not to Reason Why's Would You Hug Fire?, the piano's best moments were subsumed by a wall of sound. On The Book of Hours, the band has learned how to spotlight its keys. "Good Afternoon"s busy piano passages are immensely appealing, a stark contrast to the single chords often heard in post-rock. The piano even leads off the album; for the first 55 seconds, it's the only instrument we hear. When the other players enter in a rush, we're hooked. The album also ends with 33 consecutive blasts of guitar, bass and drums: it's like riding the biggest rollercoaster in the park one last time before leaving. Which sums up my answer to the previous question: I love Explosions in the Sky, but I miss the explosions.
While it's easy to trace the roots of post-rock's family tree, it's harder to isolate the origin of certain components. The male/female harmonies of "Good Night" ("So long, farewell" and assorted melisma) find their direct anticedents in Stubborn Tiny Lights' "Sieve of Eratosthenes" and Ef's "Hello Scotland", as the instrumentation clears a space for the voices before assertively re-emerging. These three tracks share not only a similar compositional element, but a similar mood: all are comforting, all are benign. This sound represents a solid development in a genre that tends to shy away from development: a sparse vocal style (a few words or phrases, repeated) as opposed to a verse-chorus-verse format. On "Good Night", the vocal insertion is so gentle that it feels more like a natural progression than an intrusion. The singing doesn't come into play until the 5:30 mark of a 14-minute song, and retreats so early that it is actually missed, which makes the end all the more welcome. The second retreat (at 11:50) arrives in an a cappella moment, cut short by a crash a split second before it is expected, an act of retrained wildness that bodes well for the band's future.
When reviewing Would You Hug Fire?, I was full of advice for this young group. This time, I can't think of a single thing I'd change. I'm happy, I know it, and I'm clapping my hands.
Richard Allen
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