Album Review

The knock on music beloved by blogs is that bloggers are too
frequently beholden to instantaneous turnover for their analyses to
mean much. So the fact that this Twin Cities quartet were picked up (or
picked on) as a blog favorite is sort of amusing, because they’re
anything but immediate.

The first time through Walk It Off, Tapes ‘n Tapes’ second
album, was honestly confusing: Sure, it’s guitar-based indie rock, but
it sounded awfully undifferentiated. So much for web hype. But the next
couple listens settled it in, and I started hearing songs—even
better, I started hearing guitars.

Those guitars tend more toward hyperactive rhythm than lead lines or
even noise. They’re not especially tricked up, à la Sonic Youth
and their woolly progeny. Though they get loud pretty
frequently—most ecstatically, and clinically, on the expansive
opener, “Le Ruse,” and the bottled-tension closing number, “The Dirty
Dirty”—the guitars, like the band’s songs, generally stay neatly
ordered.

If Tapes ‘n Tapes recall any single band it’s the Pixies, only Tapes
‘n Tapes’ melodic and rhythmic sense is staccato rather than
widescreen-dramatic. Josh Grier’s gulping, fragile vocals are mixed
back just enough to bob to the surface without dominating. “Conquest”
is an instructive exception: In addition to its attractively loose
strumming and cymbal-bell-accented drums, Grier is further up front,
but my attention keeps wandering to the rhythm section and a buried,
tricky little synth part.

Tapes ‘n Tapes play Wed May 14, Showbox at the Market, 8 pm,
$15, all ages. With White Denim.

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