Pterodactyl
Worldwild
Rating: 4.5
Label: Jagjaguwar
buy it at insound!
Pterodactyl’s sophomore effort Worldwild is a perfect example of everything I love about music, about the thrill of discovery in general; picked for no real reason other than familiarity with the label that released it and thus free of expectations or prior knowledge, Worldwild is a fantastically adventurous work, something completely new crafted out of structures and tricks that may have been used before, but not usually to this effect.
Dealing in the same densely layered, slightly askew group vocal tricks as Animal Collective but with a rhythmic intensity and interplay that sometimes recall the skronky post-punk of the sorely missed Q and Not U or Black Eyes, Pterodactyl are really like nothing you’ve heard before. More stunning is that as challenging as the band can be on some portions of the album, for the most part the group is firmly rooted in pop hooks and comfortably soothing textures, maintaining an excellent push and pull with the listener, never allowing the experience to become claustrophobic or alienating.
The album’s best moments pair repetitive hooks with fluctuating rhythms that dance between minimalist time-keeping and cacophonous, phenomenally complex beats. Matt Marlin’s drums on “First Daze” in particular always seem on the verge of collapsing upon themselves, while the guitars gnaw at the edges like barbed wire. Even on the tracks that are admittedly a little more difficult to digest, such as the atonal exercise “February,” the group vocals manage to keep things palatable, turning the song into a perverse contest between the instruments and the voices over who will come out on top.
But Pterodactyl’s weapon of choice is repetition, their songs more often than not structured around a beautifully repeated line, like the meandering, pleading two chords that begin “December,” ricocheting like the blips of a radar station or echo location between bats traveling against the night sky. Maybe it’s this adherence to simplicity that hides in the heart of their songs that keeps the group so listenable and rewarding; rather than trade in complexity for complexity’s sake, Pterodactyl understand that all a song ultimately needs is something the listener can go back to. Over and over.
The band pile on the layers like so many parts of a scavenger hunt, the twittering birds on “Lawrence” heralding that song’s climax, the buried orchestral tune-up in “Easy Pieces” filling the left and right channels, each piece of the sonic puzzle something to revisit. In a just world, this is an album obsessions would be borne out of, new ears converted to the cause of music one dense track at a time. But even if that’s not the fate in store for Worldwild, even if the only people who even so much as notice what Pterodactyl have created are critics and connoisseurs, in a way that makes this album all the more interesting, a lost little treasure to be shared only amongst those willing to take a risk with their ears and open their palettes.
by Morgan Davis
