Thee More Shallows - The History of Sport Fishing
(Megalon)
Just when you think independent rock is a lost cause, some unknown band makes an album like this one. Thee Shallows take the middle of the night intimacy of Arab Strap and filter it through the fragility of Neutral Milk Hotel to create music that is powerful, yet so delicate that it seems to fall apart in your head as whispered notes barely travel the space from your speakers to your ears.
Everything here is over-ripe. Everything here resonates.
"Where are you now?" recounts a basement show where MC5 played "Staying Alive" but those memories quickly turn into a confessional on "the people you choose to leave." The music is hushed and restrained, the soft whispered vocals clearly heard over the Painful dirge.
These emotions are continued in "The 8th Ring of Hell," where the singer finds himself unsure of whether to leave, admitting "several times I've been driven to cheat" but knows he will "miss your hands and your little feet." The great thing about this song is how openly and directly it covers the emotions of the cheater, the music echoing it with its uptempo nervous and jittery pace. Here the wrong-doer is shown as being just as sad and miserable as the one that was wronged.
The glimmering "I Do So Have a Sense of Humor" covers the opposite end of breaking up. Phone calls from an ex-lover about getting back together yet again bring about "I know you have a big heart because it has space for all of the hearts that you tear apart." The song starts off strong-willed, a five in the morning sing-along recanting and mocking the proposition of getting back together, however, the song then gets sappy and sentimental as a juvenile keyboard melody and sweeping strings take over the song and the mood.
"The Horizon is a Single Point" ends the album by slowing the pace that much more dramatically, creating a Codeine-like drip. The imagery indicates great despondency, but the song transitions into a sad but determined four minute build that grows more and more fluid, ending the song and the album with the words "nothing's gonna bring me down."
These songs are great mellow, intimate rock, but to limit Thee Shallows to just that description would be wrong. There is so much going on in this recording. From the orchestral moments in "Pulchritude," to the wolf howling that is worked into "The CruXXX," to the woodwinds in "He Hate Me," to the math-y interjections in "The Perfect Map" — the album is richly detailed, showing great care and skill towards song- and sound-craft, not just emotion.
"Pulchritude," which I'm pretty sure means "Oh Comely" in American, shows just how skilled the band is, as they are more able to pull off being a chamber orchestra in these two-and-a-half minutes than all the other bands who spend their whole practices aspiring to be a chamber orchestra.
Thee More Shallows remind me a lot of (recently departed and dismantled) fellow San Francisco band Fuck. Both are comparable to Yo La Tengo, but both are more mellow and intimate, making the comparison more of a lazy starting point than a full description. Only, compared to the F-word band, the emotion here seems more direct and real, and the music seems more organic and dramatic. Simply an awestriking debut... one of those albums that is very hard to write about because when you listen to it, all you want to do is listen to it.
To quote the band: "I think we found the perfect map to the song in your head before they announced you dead." And how.
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