Tarentel - The Order of Things
(Neurot)
Tarentel is increasingly mentioned alongside Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Bardo Pond, Tortoise, and the like as a central player in the present and largely instrumental post-rock scene. While still budding, the band has demonstrated over the course of one full-length album and several EPs and singles that they are focused on constantly honing their craft, never being content with releasing material that sounds like what has come before. Growth is what Tarentel is about as a band, and perhaps it is fitting that their latest album, The Order of Things, is adorned with a photo of lush foliage on the front cover. The record has been in the works for a while, but the results prove that the wait was completely worthwhile.
The album opens tremendously with "Adonai," a track quite at home with the band's previous efforts. The number slowly builds through guitar and bass, periodically accentuated with some wonderfully placed trumpet work and vocals. At the six-minute mark the tone shifts--slow work on the bass moves to the forefront while digital effects, artifacts, and guitars swirl the track into a low, slow drone. Eleven minutes after play has started, "Popul Vuh" follows appropriately on the heels and immediately moves the album into graceful, orderly, and powerful set of sweeping strings. Eventually a strong bass line comes under the surface that is immediately followed by drums and soon guitar as well, leaving nothing but one solid, fluid motion behind. The strings vanish from this mix, only to further reinstate their hold over their track when they reappear a movement later. Albeit only six minutes long, this might be one of the album's finest moments.
The band's piano-centered rendition of Ricky Lee Jones' "Ghosty Head" is obviously a first of sorts for the band. Not only does it feature ethereal and almost spectral female vocals, but it is also a cover. The lack of human voices (apart from samples) from the rest of Tarentel's output is relatively obvious. Tarentel has always seemed intent on using their music to create a desired atmosphere and has seemingly taken the approach that vocals were simply unnecessary to accomplish those ends. This track takes that sort of approach and demonstrates just how vocals can also be used in addition to instruments to position the listener in a certain location. "Death in the Mind of the Living" is the closest that the band has come to venturing into the world of pure drone. Certain points over the track's fourteen minutes reach the same layered noise that is often only achieved during a Pelt show. This is obviously some choice material.
The album's final two tracks, "Pneuma" and "Blessed/Cursed", return to more familiar territory. Leading from one into the other, the tracks effectively close out the album and leave you content. The second movement of "Blessed/Cursed" is slow and quiet, almost like a lullaby. Beautiful.
Where The Order of Things is remarkably successful is in taking all of the powerful moments from the rest of their discography--the sweeping grandeur of "Steede Bonnet" from From Bone to Satellite, the noise manipulation from the end of "Looking for Things," the shorter and more straightforward song structures from the Two Sides of Myself 7"--and mix them all together into a sort of "Best of" package. You get everything that you would want. This record is not only one that would certainly please Tarentel fans but should just as easily create a number of new converts. A solid and well-produced release from a band that is doing little except growing and becoming one of the best voices in American music today. Period.
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