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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