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And Constellation hits us once again with a new masterpiece. The Montreal-based label is, together with fellow Montreal label Alien8, the leading record company in more experimental forms of pop and rock, and with this new Do Make Say Think album they raise their standard again a little bit higher. As do DMST themselves, since & Yet & Yet is their third and by far their best album to date.
Do Make Say Think's first two albums (their self-titled debut and Goodbye Enemy Airship The Landlord Is Dead) provided a good foundation, because their first was post-rock meeting dub and lounge, and their second was them leaving dub and lounge more and more behind in favour of jazz, with the additional information that Goodbye Enemy Airship The Landlord Is Dead was a whole lot better in terms of songwriting and originality. Stylistically, this new album is somewhere between the first and the second, but nothing could have prepared us for the giant leap forwards that is & Yet & Yet.
The Toronto-based band kicks off with Classic Noodlanding, a song in typical Do Make Say Think style: loose, jazzy drumming by both drummers, quiet guitarnoodling, added atmospheric sounds by both brass instruments and synths, and a composition with pastoral melodies. Then suddenly the drums go straightforward towards the vicinity of pop territory, but they never manage to make it that far. Nor do they want to. It's evident that Do Make Say Think are more at ease with softness and subtlety, because the sonic eruptions that sometimes present on its predecessor are almost gone; only in the second song, End Of Music, things tend to get a bit more loud and massive, but it still is very melodic and carries that Do Make Say Think touch. Not easy to pinpoint that touch actually, but it has something to do with the atmosphere: pastoral, light, warm, not happy or sad but seemingly at ease with the situation they are in, intimate, comfortable. Music that eases your mind just as easily while working as it does when you're lying down after coming home from a loud concert.
They succeeded in creating a style of their own; a style where post-rock is sided by equal parts of dub and jazz, which provide some beautiful textures and depth in the rather dry sound. White Light Of has those double jazzy drumming parts that are rapidly becoming a typical Do Make Say Think trademark, as are the melodic brass parts in the same song. In the following Chinatown, a dub foundation is spread out while an immensely beautiful guitar theme is played over it. And even if the pace gets faster and the drive gets more important, like in Reitschule, the intimate atmosphere doesn't change. In Soul And Onward, the band for the first time uses vocals, but in an instrumental way: Tamara Williamson sings as guest vocalist, adding a sad melancholy to the song. And although she produces only sounds and no words, the feeling is that of a long-lost love, of something that will never return again. The most heartbreaking musical moment I witnessed in ages. After this, the summer breeze of Anything For Now is both refreshing and comforting at the same time: Guitars are blown forward by the wind, the soft drums take care of the propulsion, all the other sounds and instruments compliment the atmosphere, only to eventually transform into a warm and comfortable drone where all is lost and won back again and time stands still forever.
http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/do-make-say-think/yet-yet/1478/
Meer Do Make Say Think op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/do-make-say-think
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