Talbot Tagora
Lessons in the Woods or a City
Rating: 3.0/5.0
Label: Hardly Art
I really hate reviewing things that don’t have much of an impact on me one way or another. I’d rather have to deal with an outright monstrosity, punishable in its shittiness than something that’s merely all right. Much-hyped Seattlites Talbot Tagora are pretty much as all right as all right gets on Lessons in the Woods or a City.
The album fails to do much else but reconfigure the energy and danger hinted at on the opening “Mixed Signals Through Miles of Pilgrimage” and thus, completely eradicating all such energy and danger. True, the song does set a blueprint of sorts for the rest of the album with its minimal, crunchy percussion and chest-thumping bass. The guitars ring with an industrial clang and the vocals don’t use words so much as somewhat human noises. It’s a great trick, all in all, but the Intelligence already stole it from the A-Frames who already cribbed it from some Big Black demos. Add in the song’s “Hey, we listen to Sonic Youth, too!” noise interlude and you’re already wearing my patience thin.
Although, as an opener, it makes sense; it gets the mission statement out of the way and lets everyone know that even though you’re serious you’re smiling about it all too. Trouble is, “Ichthus Hop” follows it up with pretty much the same thing, but with guitars set firmly in Sonic Youth-covering-Crime mode (hotwire yr own damn heart) and a rhythm section that either took too many uppers or had been the unwitting subjects of a tape loop experiment. At least at 2:26, it’s a quicker romp and might have been a stronger lead-off track.
The bulk of the songs on this album, though, missed opportunities. “Bounty Hunter” has an Ex-Models level of blitzkrieg going on but without much purpose or mapping. “Solar Puppets” I swear sounds like some Berklee School avant jerks covering “Tonight, Tonight;” I don’t know that that’s a good thing. See, I found myself conflicted between my desire for the band to be even more minimal than the Seattle heavies they’re imitating (Thee Oh Sees and The Intelligence) and sounding more chaotic and insane than the math rock outcasts they ape elsewhere. You kind of get this on “Hunger Strike” which starts like one of Parts and Labor’s better moments, with vocals taken straight from the book of Brainiac before everything descends into the type of hell Sonic Youth used to paint on shit like “Brave Men Run in My Family-” all tribal stomp and lead lines that unknowingly murder the notion of classic rock, despite a reverent aim.
It’s a great moment, indicating that this band can more than replicate. Even if the rest of the album at least attempted similar risks and just failed, it’d be worth picking up. Instead, I’m left here with some truly atrocious cover art, a one sheet that reads like the mad scribblings of someone watching far too much Lost, and an album populated mainly by different interpretations of the prompt “Make a song sounding like Lars Finberg humping Lux Interior’s swiftly decomposing corpse.”
by Morgan Davis
