People often ask me, "Puffmagic, how does one understand the emergence and breakdown of (semi-)classical spacetime (and in particular, its causal structure) from M-theory (or, if appropriate, from a more fundamental theory of quantum gravity)?"To which I answer, "Allow me to answer your question with another question; should we expect low-energy particle physics to arise from a generic compactification, or is the very constraining data on the cosmological term pointing us toward some very specific backgrounds of M theory?"And that usually shuts them up.But when people aren’t begging me to unlock the vast mysteries of String Theory they usually ask me about records. Specifically which ones are good. Well as you Moggers have noticed, I like to tell people which albums are good, and, conversely, which ones are non-good, or bad. I tend to stay away from the bad ones because one of the prerequisites of my telling you which are good and which are bad is that I actually have to listen to them, and if I understand an album to be bad ahead of time, i.e. the new live album from Deep Purple which the band themselves beg fans not to listen to. Easy to avoid. Thusly my reviews tend to come out mostly favorable, though sometimes I’m disappointed buy an album which all available data suggested would be “good” and my world is thrown into chaos, the very foundations of reason dashed by a crappy album that everybody said was “Rad.” As I’ve mentioned recently Justin Timberlake’s “Futuresex/Lovesounds” was one of these. Also Dane Cook.
Luckily the review I offer today is not one of a bad album. It’s actually of a pretty good album. An album by a band I’d never heard of until this morning and who’s back catalog I’m not even remotely familiar with (yet). The band: Do Make Say Think, a ubiquitously post-rock Canadian band who’ve apparently neglected to release an album in the last four years. They’ve been known to tour with fellow ubiquitously post-rock Canadians, Broken Social Scene (hereafter referred to as “BSS”), and actually shares two members with the all-star band, which makes sense because they sound a lot alike. The album in question is this year’s “You, You’re a History of Rust” is often reminiscent of the softer areas of BSS’s work, though a bit more organic, trading synth and sample for string and shaker. Quietly awaking with “Bound to Be That Way” the record paints the picture of a rainy autumn afternoon in the country, gazing out upon a cloud-washed field of green, the soft percussion of rain playing on it’s infinitely varied timpani arrangement. Music to light a fire to. Music to wear warm socks to. But without warning the music gains a startling liveliness and becomes something active and focused, the production switching from soft and humid to dry and tight, then as quickly as it began it’s over. The song goes from drizzle to downpour without ever drowning you. Following that is “A With Living”, a slow-building tribal drum beat in the distance like thunder and the first lyrics on the album. Every instrument but the shimmering guitar begins as if far away and muffled but is brought slowly into the foreground, swelling and pitching like a storm-chased fishing boat on rough seas. The track dies down to a peaceful waltz, evaporating in a lazy chorus of trumpets. The first real “rock” moment comes with the P.A.-speaker guitar assault on the vivid “The Universe!”. With a frantic energy the track spits and snarls and scratches like a cat caught by the tail, dangerously fun and so crunchy it borders on pure fuzz. “A Tender History of Rust” offers metallic hums and buzzing with quivering tremolo before giving into the secret joke of the band who can be heard audibly laughing as the song dissolves into a folksy picking progression devoid of any of the previous industry. Possibly the albums softest number. It even has whistling and humming. After that we have “Herstory of Glory”, tight, elastic bass lines, treble heavy guitar, rain-drop piano and, I think, ghosts? “You, You’re Awesome” sounds like something a drunk buddy would belch into your ear at a beach bonfire. Which is exactly what this song sounds like.; a drunken swagger with passion and a sort of crushed emotion that’s barely contained. It even sound like it passes out at the end. I’m not sure what to say about “Executioner’s Blues”, it’s kinda, hm…. it’s saturated. Yeah, it’s saturated. The final track “In Mind” is good, but what weirded me out is, while I was listening to it I was watching "this Ritchie Valens clip":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8RdDKeEYnM with the volume down and the DMST track synched up to the people’s movements. That’s neither here nor there but I just thought it was interesting. So there you have it. Another great album by another great band from Toronto. I tell ya, those Canadians and their post-rock. They’ll be the death of me.Puffmagic gives Do Make Say Think’s “You, You’re a History in Rust” 4 out of 5 Rob Gordons
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