4 out of 5

Label: Matador

Produced by: Greg Freeman, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282

Probably the most representative TFUL 282 record there was… which means it takes some purposeful detours into bullshit, just ’cause delivering a perfect record is boring, y’all.

Leading up to Mother Of All Saints were some interesting discs which introduced the band’s insouciant switching between sloppy college jams, instrumental freakouts, and… Feller Filler, their ‘non-song’ sketches of noodling and nonsense.  While I might wish for some world where TFUL forewent Feller Filler, it’s undeniably part of the group’s identity, and forced a listener to very much take the band on its own inscrutable terms.  You couldn’t outright suggest them to someone without some adendums; you couldn’t make direct comparisons to, say, Beefheart or Sonic Youth or Pavement because it didn’t come close to the whole picture.  During the late 80s / early 90s flourishing of landmark acts, TFUL felt like a dirty secret.  They weren’t serious enough, they weren’t stupid enough.

And then with Mother Of All Saints, they got serious, but again, in a way unique to the band.  They went all in.

The first album’s worth of tracks here – from Gentleman’s Lament to Infection – are some of the best, and most consistent, work the group has or had delivered.  They rock, they swoon; there’s undeniable skill in the crazy combination of bass funk and guitar riffage, various vocalists soaring or just-so-precisely anti-harmonizing with the mash of instrumentation.  The Filler that’s there act like effective bridges between grand moments, and a range of emotions are fulfilled.  But brace yourself: there are some warm-up hints or what’s to come.  A momentum hobbling racing train sound effect on Hummingbird In A Cube Of Ice puts me in mind of the myth of the first motion picture of a moving train sending the audience running screaming in fear of this unknown imagery; next up is six straight tracks of wandering, increasingly more annoying Filler.

Butting all of this stuff together is a mighty middle finger, and while there’s value in moments throughout, it kicks off (on ‘Pleasure Circle’) with someone laughing at us, telling us they lied, and ‘culminates’ in the goddamned annoying ‘Tuning Notes,’ which has someone bumblingly explaining their tuning process… before discordant noise takes over the track’s end.  But we’re not done.  ‘Shuddering Big Butter’ and ‘1″ Tall’ are sort of songs, but they’re not anything like the fully fleshed out compositions we heard, and they’re still very much tainted by the fooling-around sensibility of Filler.

When we return to real tracks with ‘Raymond H.’ and ‘Cistern,’ TFUL show some awareness of what they’ve put us through: instead of going back to the more raucous opening section, these songs – which are excellent – take a bit more of a patience, reflective approach, building up into a mighty conclusion.  We’re then appropriately letdown with the muted melody of ‘El Cerrito.’

Every time I listen to Mother Of All Saints, I am thrilled by its opening, frustrated by its Filler, then picked back up by its conclusion.  This inevitably makes me listen to the album again, which allows that stretch of Filler to seem more accessible, and interesting, and, dammit, necessary for making this a true Thinking Fellers experience.