3 out of 5

Label: The End

Producer: Rob Kleiner

Ut, something’s missing…  You could point to the obvious – the strangely professional looking cover with its new-for-Tub Ring color choices; the lack of SETI reference; no ‘robot’ track… but it’s something else.  ‘The Great Filter’ had these other trends in place but didn’t exactly sound like Tub Ring.  The disc somehow maintained the spirit, though, and is still a frequent listen.  ‘Secret Handshakes’ does, actually, sound like TR.  …Just missing a quality.

To its credit, the disc gets out to an immense start with ‘Stop This (NOW!)’ and ‘Birds of a Different Color,’ the former bringing back the pop sensibilities that worked really well on ‘Filter’ and the latter just a generally good scattershot punky TR mix.  Our first dose of ‘offness’ comes with ‘Gold Finger’, which has a respectable beat but stupidass lyrics that just don’t sit well with the group’s last four albums worth of sci-lite silly smarts.  I suppose it could slot into the purposefully-duh-as-humor column, but that’s a new move to me (although its possible that this was a college-era elements – albums I haven’t heard – as evidenced on some of the ‘Optics & Sonics’ roughness)… and apparently we could dump the weak ‘I Shot Your Faggot Horse Bitch’ into the same category.  Both of these songs are workable enough compositionally, though they’re completely lacking the spice TR normally brings to a song, as well as only eliciting a smile from me upon first or second listen and thereafter almost gets skipped.  And tracks 4 – 6 on ‘Handshakes’ then just seem to go into auto-mode, with the drumbeat sequencing turned waaay up… like there’s no longer a drummer and this is just a more spazzy 8-Bit Brothers.  The lyrics – chemical equations for settin’ things alight, cryogenics – rifle through familiar themes, but the lack of excitement in the songs carries over, unfortunately, making this seem more like stock topics than something to care about.  There’s no longer secret conspiracies or surprises in the science, its just another set of words for rhyming about girls.

The Queen cover of ‘Flash’ manages to turn things completely around for a little while, as does its preceding ‘Feed the Rapture,’ and a couple tracks later, ‘Optimistic.’  Proof that Tub Ring is still there, capable of turning on a dime and finding new ways to wring excitement from their lil’ corner of spazz rock.  These tracks help us through the last few tracks on the disc, which are, again, average, but at least don’t feel as phoned in as 4-6.

And so now in 2014, we must note that its been longer without a Tub Ring disc than its been since 2001.  ‘Secret Handshakes’ definitely has its moments – enough moments to not brush the band off, to get you excited for what could come next – but the equal amount of averageness, as well as some rather stupid tracks, makes it the only disc of theirs I own which gets the ‘skip to this track’ treatment.  Here’s hoping the band does continue, and uses this extra pause to dust away any filler that might be haunting a next album.