7/10
Experiment In Error is a title that set me up to be hoodwinked the first time I tried giving Shibboleth's debut album a listen. To be precise, it was the word "experiment" that got me into trouble, lending my ear the bias brought on by what the term has come to mean in our 21st century pop-music world.
The first notes of the album-opener "The 1912 Horsey Rebellion," with its easy Caribbean guitars segueing into a cantering Mexican ride through the desert, immediately brought to mind the Avalanches Since I Left You, (and the associations most people who've listened to that album have with horses probably didn't help either). After a couple more tracks that were reminiscent of El Guincho and Panda Bear respectively, I felt sure I was in for a pleasant review of the best "experimental" styles of the past decade, performed by a group with a thorough knowledge of how to recreate the technology-based achievements of their recent ancestors.
As the album progressed, however, some things began to nag at me. First, I was twenty minutes into this experimental odyssey and I hadn't heard a single vocal. More importantly, I hadn't heard a single sampled vocal. Then there was the song structure - every track flowed seamlessly from beginning to end in the most languid, gradual way possible. Where were the epic time-changes, the bursts of static, or the occasional free-flying leaps over suddenly low-fi backing beats?
Getting a little curious, I headed over to Shibboleth's My Space, where I experienced a shocking revelation. "Instrumental"? "Surf Rock"? Wait a minute, is Shibboleth...A JAM BAND!?
This is definitely a gross-over simplification, but to many music fans, the definition of "experiment" has changed over the past few decades. Today experimentation means samplers and Panda Bear. Thirty years ago, it meant LSD and the Dead. To a lot people engaged in the music scene today, groups like Animal Collective and the Avalanches are OUR jam bands. The same creative approach is used, resulting in a similar tone being set, despite the use of wildly different technological approaches. Jamie Lidell's live vocal-sample ziggurats are today's never-ending acid guitar solos. Oh god...
But the point about Experiment In Error is that to a member of Generation Y it will sound a hell of a lot like the Panda Bear or El Guincho. If this album gets a wide audience, you can bet we'll be seeing aspiring producers making Shibboleth-based mix-tapes in the hopes of getting signed to Star Trak.
What makes it great is that Shibboleth, like fellow sonic-landscapers Ratatat, does this using traditional rock-band instruments. It’s marvelous to realize that what you thought were cleverly used classic synth-line samples are actually the original creations of keyboardist Rich Martin. The rhythmic choices he makes are always unique - at times it sounds like he's trying to imitate a melody he created earlier on Fruity Loops or Cubase and he does a damn good job of it too. The versatility of bassist James Driscoll and guitarist Don Cento is also impressive, as they seem to find a unique way to approach most songs.
The album has a few standouts. "Meatballs" is the album's only real rocker, and it does a great job combining a little eighties-synthesizer menace with some T.Rex sex appeal. A mid-album double bill - "Knute," a lazy cruise down the strip at sunset with Steely Dan; and "Do Not Forsake Me. Billy Bremner," the only track with a surprise ending - is the high point of the release. The other tracks are consistently solid, although the fifteen tracks presented could definitely be trimmed down a bit. "Goats Across The Fire" is really just a rehash of "The 1912 Horsey Rebellion," and its inclusion, along with a few of the other weaker tracks, detracts from the band's otherwise impressive versatility. Again, it’s even more astounding in this day and age that such range is achieved using acquired technique rather than crate-digging.
Experiment In Error is a great album that will sound familiar to fans of this decade's sampler-using indie-stars. At the same time they might wonder, as I do, whether Shibboleth are just a very methodical band heavily influenced by groups like The Shadows or the Dead, or if they're a group trying to recreate their contempories’ Picasso-ed images using a conventional palette. Or both. Realizing Shibboleth was a band using regular instruments was kind of like hearing that Jamie Foxx was actually singing Ray Charles's bit on Kanye West's "Gold Digger." Except with Foxx my reaction was "Why? Necessary?" With Shibboleth, the value-added is clear to anyone willing to give Experiments in Error a listen.
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Experiment In Error is a title that set me up to be hoodwinked the first time I tried giving Shibboleth's debut album a listen. To be precise, it was the word "experiment" that got me into trouble, lending my ear the bias brought on by what the term has come to mean in our 21st century pop-music world.
The first notes of the album-opener "The 1912 Horsey Rebellion," with its easy Caribbean guitars segueing into a cantering Mexican ride through the desert, immediately brought to mind the Avalanches Since I Left You, (and the associations most people who've listened to that album have with horses probably didn't help either). After a couple more tracks that were reminiscent of El Guincho and Panda Bear respectively, I felt sure I was in for a pleasant review of the best "experimental" styles of the past decade, performed by a group with a thorough knowledge of how to recreate the technology-based achievements of their recent ancestors.
As the album progressed, however, some things began to nag at me. First, I was twenty minutes into this experimental odyssey and I hadn't heard a single vocal. More importantly, I hadn't heard a single sampled vocal. Then there was the song structure - every track flowed seamlessly from beginning to end in the most languid, gradual way possible. Where were the epic time-changes, the bursts of static, or the occasional free-flying leaps over suddenly low-fi backing beats?
Getting a little curious, I headed over to Shibboleth's My Space, where I experienced a shocking revelation. "Instrumental"? "Surf Rock"? Wait a minute, is Shibboleth...A JAM BAND!?
This is definitely a gross-over simplification, but to many music fans, the definition of "experiment" has changed over the past few decades. Today experimentation means samplers and Panda Bear. Thirty years ago, it meant LSD and the Dead. To a lot people engaged in the music scene today, groups like Animal Collective and the Avalanches are OUR jam bands. The same creative approach is used, resulting in a similar tone being set, despite the use of wildly different technological approaches. Jamie Lidell's live vocal-sample ziggurats are today's never-ending acid guitar solos. Oh god...
But the point about Experiment In Error is that to a member of Generation Y it will sound a hell of a lot like the Panda Bear or El Guincho. If this album gets a wide audience, you can bet we'll be seeing aspiring producers making Shibboleth-based mix-tapes in the hopes of getting signed to Star Trak.
What makes it great is that Shibboleth, like fellow sonic-landscapers Ratatat, does this using traditional rock-band instruments. It’s marvelous to realize that what you thought were cleverly used classic synth-line samples are actually the original creations of keyboardist Rich Martin. The rhythmic choices he makes are always unique - at times it sounds like he's trying to imitate a melody he created earlier on Fruity Loops or Cubase and he does a damn good job of it too. The versatility of bassist James Driscoll and guitarist Don Cento is also impressive, as they seem to find a unique way to approach most songs.
The album has a few standouts. "Meatballs" is the album's only real rocker, and it does a great job combining a little eighties-synthesizer menace with some T.Rex sex appeal. A mid-album double bill - "Knute," a lazy cruise down the strip at sunset with Steely Dan; and "Do Not Forsake Me. Billy Bremner," the only track with a surprise ending - is the high point of the release. The other tracks are consistently solid, although the fifteen tracks presented could definitely be trimmed down a bit. "Goats Across The Fire" is really just a rehash of "The 1912 Horsey Rebellion," and its inclusion, along with a few of the other weaker tracks, detracts from the band's otherwise impressive versatility. Again, it’s even more astounding in this day and age that such range is achieved using acquired technique rather than crate-digging.
Experiment In Error is a great album that will sound familiar to fans of this decade's sampler-using indie-stars. At the same time they might wonder, as I do, whether Shibboleth are just a very methodical band heavily influenced by groups like The Shadows or the Dead, or if they're a group trying to recreate their contempories’ Picasso-ed images using a conventional palette. Or both. Realizing Shibboleth was a band using regular instruments was kind of like hearing that Jamie Foxx was actually singing Ray Charles's bit on Kanye West's "Gold Digger." Except with Foxx my reaction was "Why? Necessary?" With Shibboleth, the value-added is clear to anyone willing to give Experiments in Error a listen.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=2659320
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