Lanois bends pedal steel and lap steel into gold, sliced and swooped, all clipped attacks and dying decays, layered into ambient alien pulse. It ties into my sense-memory of the finest moments of the KLF's Chill Out, wrapped around with a Books-ian knack for finding the emotional center of a snippet of sound. It's beautiful.
The only shame is that it never really finds an album, let alone _songs_. There's no landmark or progression across the 12 arbitrary delineations on the disc, no climax or fade out as it ends, just suddenly the album isn't playing anymore.
On one hand, it reinforces the otherworldy quality - as if these were field recordings with no regard for listener experience baked-in. But it seems like a missed opportunity, never elevating the listen beyond its central trick, which lolls repeating until it feels a gimmick 3.5/5
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment