Parlour
Simulacrenfield
Rating: 3.1/5.0
Label: Temporary Residence
It’s maybe unavoidable to approach non-classical, non-jazz, indie-instrumental music without throwing around the term “post-rock.” It’s a term that has its limitations, but is useful in describing Louisville collective Parlour’s new release Simulacrenfield (say that five times fast), their first full-length album since 2002′s Googler. Led by guitarist/scene veteran Tim Furnish, who has roots in bands like Cerebellum and Crain, Parlour has been around for nearly a decade, but seem to take their time between releases. Swollen to a seven-piece for this album, including some of Furnish’s former bandmates, they have expanded the standard guitar-bass-drums lineup to include synths, clarinets and saxes.
In positioning them in the post-rock pantheon, they’re not as ferocious as Mogwai, as brooding and political as Godspeed! You Black Emperor, but neither are they as noodly and cerebral as Chicago bands like The Sea and Cake. One of the band’s distinguishing factors is their sense of humor in what can be a rather dour genre. An earlier album was called Octopus Off-Broadway, the cover of Googler is a bunch of googly eyes and song titles here include “Sea of Bubbly Goo” and “Jalepenooptics.” That’s not to say that the music is particularly light or humorous, but it does nicely undermine any pretentiousness, even on an album with a song called “Camus.”
Simulacrenfield is dense and textured and works as a piece, which is one of its strengths. It opens with the dynamic “Destruction Paper,” which avoids the slow build of many post-rock songs, but hits immediately with its tight rhythms, clean keyboards and warm horns, which provide much of the melody and color. It doesn’t divert much from this template, but the band make the most of it and vary the textures of “Camus” by adding strings to the mix. “Jalepenooptics” is not a Tex-Mex song, but this midpoint in the album is where the band slows things down a little, creating nice, lulling atmospherics, before acclerating and allowing fluid guitars to take prominence. The title track has the spacey, psych-like rush of early Pink Floyd and a disciplined, Krautrock drive. It could be the soundtrack to a tense and dramatic movie scene and you almost wish there were vocals to give you a better sense of what it’s about.
The relatively concise “Carrier” foregrounds the horns again and locks into something of a heavy jazz fusion groove. The 10-minute closer “Sea of Bubbly Goo” may be the most ambitious and expansive song on the album. It’s too tightly constructed to live up to its title, but it does hit with an oceanic force. It begins slowly and deliberately, moves into more spacey territory and then streamlines and heads out on Neu!’s autobahn – “Hallogallo” in particular – before erupting around the eight-minute mark in a way that seems as if it will totally come apart. It doesn’t so much end as exhaust itself.
Coming in at around 42 minutes, Simulacrenfield avoids the sprawl and self-importance that can plague post-rock albums. The expressive, varied drumming by Jon Cook (Crain, Rodan) is particularly strong throughout, keeping the songs solid and rooted and putting the rock in post-rock. It’s not an album that breaks new ground or expands the horizons of the genre, but it is likely to be one of the most vivid, energetic and skillfully played instrumental albums of the year.
by Lukas Sherman
