2 out of 5

Label: Suicide Squeeze

Produced by: John Congleton

I swear I gave this several chances.  On speakers; in headphones; in different headphones.  Ever since stumbling across TWDY as part of Congleton’s production work – since John is a Producer Of Note, to me – I’d been eager to hear them, as descriptions of their instrumental gloomy metal just tickled my heavy-instrumental-music-fan fancy.  I relented at some point and checked out some youtube tracks but was madly underwhelmed.  Still, I figured it might be an album affair, not something that works track by track, and kept my interest on the back-burner until the opportunity to buy some albums on sale happened.  So here we are.

The album sounds amazing.  About which I’m actually quite surprised, given how wall-of-sound Another Language is.  Congleton (to my ears) tends to be a ‘record ‘er as she sounds’ type of producer, his specialties coming to the fore when a group’s sound is more layered in and of itself: 90 Day Men, his own Paper Chase, St. Vincent.  These bands might make a racket, but it’s not a traditional racket.  On ‘Another Language,’ TWDY are frequently going loud via massive distortion and pounding drums and then these subtle flourishes of recordings, or key work, or sound effects, or heavy, heavy reverb.  These “extras” are very, very background, and really just seem to embellish the volume moreso than call attention to themselves.  Which results in an appropriately haunting sound, pushing the album beyond the standard realm of guitar/bass/drums instrumental.  The problem, though, is a lack of… soul.

In 2013, Russian Circles, another instrumental group – though more of the head-bang, Pelican version – released ‘Memorial.’  RC had slowly built up a following in the scene, and the album received some of their most favorable reviews.  But, to me, it lacked soul.  It sounded more and more like a group that wanted to be part of a scene, instead of a group who made music which just sort of happened to get lumped into a scene.  Total judgement call, of course, it’s just my explanation for an emptiness that prevented me from “feeling” the music, although it seemed like it would be right up my alley.  And TWDY suffer from the same, although swapping out Pelican references for the “loud and beautiful” quiet/storm dynamics of Mogwai or Red Sparowes.  This emptiness stacks on top of how much every track on Another Language sounds the same, with the differences mainly in how fast or how echoey the loud section of any given song is, which, even that would be forgivable if the construction of these dynamics wouldn’t just quit as soon as the song finds it’s groove, which happens on pretty much every track except for the longest, ‘War Prayer,’ which takes the time to pulse through its highs and lows a couple rounds.  Otherwise its slow and pretty tinkling, hit the distortion peddle, play the same chords, then toodle-oo.  It’s a valid formula, and arresting the first time out (opener ‘New Topia’), but way less arresting once the themes and setups are repeated ad nauseam.

But y’know what?  I don’t really like Mogwai either.  Still, Another Language is TWDY’s most recent disc at this point, and as I actually enjoyed Russian Circles’ earlier albums over ‘Memorial,’ so perhaps the same will be true for this band.  I got some other discs on that sale.  We’ll see.