Tortoise: Classic or Dud

Yeah, it wasn't bad or exciting. I want to give it a try on my car's bose surround-sound though. I'm thinking the bass needs to be felt.

What struck me as odd was some of the geeky keyboard(?) sounds at the end of the album which fit perfectly with the dorky album photograph. It was odd because it wasn't anything I wanted to hear.

Let me rephrase that. It's odd because they purposely mixed dorky into those last few tracks

Just saw these dudes last week, and it was one of the most dull concerts I've ever been to.

Ah, don't tell me that! Got cajoled into accompanying some friends to see them in a few weeks. Said friends are superfans. I'm more an 'appreciator' than a fan, though I loved TNT back in the day.

ha yeah i was thinking about seeing them in a couple months. last time I saw Tortoise was ... 1998?

My biggest issue I've had with Tortoise see the wee early days here is that they just don't improvise at all. They're all great players, but they're like a chamber group sticking to the script. It can be kind of a bummer.

I never loved them... more respected them. I pretty much prefer all their other projects to Tortoise, but was somehow not expecting something so... boring. I've never before felt a compulsion to leave a concert as strong as I did at this one. Very disappointing. Curious to see if anyone else has had a similar reaction. Was this one just a bad show?

the no improvising thing is kinda surprising since Jeff Parker has now been in the band so long. I've never seen them since he joined actually. i suppose he puts all in improv energy into other projects.

tbh and fwiw, I've never liked Parker's playing

millions of lemmings can't be wrong

I saw them on the tour for Beacons and thought it was good but not amazing. Then they played "Djed" and it was pretty outstanding - and I don't feel like it was just nostalgia. More that it underlined how ambitious they'd once been.

millions of now lemmings can't will never be wrong

― Naive Teen Idol, Friday, March 18, 2016 2:35 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've seen them a few times. They were pretty good when I saw them at a Thrill Jockey anniversary show at I think Bowery Ballroom, although somehow I feel like everything they do would work better live if it was just a little tighter and more intense, especially in light of not improvising -- it always feels ambitious but falling short, like there's this weird tension between fussiness and not giving a fuck among the band members.

The last time I saw them was at a Bang on a Can marathon and they were terrible -- they were like accidentally knocking over instruments, they handled the poor acoustics of the room really badly, and the tightness of all the musicians who proceeded them made them come off as extra sloppy.

Saw them in Mpls, first time ever, and enjoyed it. Lack of improvisation doesn't bother me, but there were a few spots where the playing was definitely more laborious / not as tight as I'd expected. The guitar was off the beat on "Yonder Blue" (kind of unraveled a song that should sound effortless) and John McEntire seemed to be working really hard to maintain a pretty simple hammering rhythm on "Shake Hands with Danger." That said I found his style compelling. I like when a drummer overplays the seriousness of his task. The band's other two drummers are looser, more dynamic, really impressive.

I think McEntire is such a great drummer that he has spent most of his career trying to perform like a lesser talented drummer, to sometimes awkward effect/affect.

I definitely enjoy Bitney and Herndon more. McEntire is great but uptight.

Herndon is the funkiest one, right? I really dig his drumming in 5ive Style.

I always thought Ryan Rapsys from Euphone would've been a great fit for Tortoise. Monster drummer, super underappreciated. Dude can play circles around McEntire and Co.

I forget that Tortoise used to be quite an interesting band at one point. Always thought Standards was a fantastic album and kind of pre-empts the whole Dawn of Midi / Girls in Airports / Go Go Penguin style of nu-jazz-electronica.

Cosign. Really I like all of their albums through It's All Around You (which itself I think had some foreshadowing of chill wave and sea punk) and even Beacons had a few moments.

live recording over here: http://www.nyctaper.com/2016/03/tortoise-march-17-2016-littlefield/

Dawn of Midi / Girls in Airports / Go Go Penguin/sea punk

Haha, I don't know what any of this means! Thanks, google. Well, more or less, because I still don't get sea punk as a concept, sound, look or idea. Do they sing about pirates?

being kind of have facetious about seapunk, but that record definitely used some repurposed 90s tacky synth sounds, and that sort of thing became all the rage like 8-10 years later.

Dawn of Midi and GIA are definitely worth everybody's time. GIA are fast turning into one of my favourite bands of the moment.

Huh, having listened to a bit I can see why you'd bring GIA up in a Tortoise thread. I guess I hear a little more ... ECM, maybe, in them, though.

Check out the album, Kaikoura. It's a grower.

xps - best tortoise drummer is def whichever one of them did the phasered beats on "seneca" and the breakdown of "monica". sweet pockets and sonics.

Man, I've really gotten into Standards lately for some reason...

Standards is a really good record! It really has a *sound*, maaaaaaan

I LOVE "Monica".

Yah, "Monica" is the clear jam. "Seneca," too.

Gonna put on Standards now, haven't listened to it in a while

I think they were probably at their tightest on that record

This is better than the new Tortoise album.

http://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/get-dressed

weird

As I said upthread, I've always been more an appreciator than major fan (always loved TNT, felt pretty OK with that being the only one I needed to own), but lately I've been revisiting and reevaluating in a pretty big way. Standards just clicked for me recently, and that Lazarus Taxon box has some incredible stuff (alongside the expected non-essential box set-y stuff) on it too.

Not sure if Poliopolice upthread saw them on this tour on an "off" night, but I thought they were excellent when I saw them a week or so ago. I also found myself marveling at what is actually required to play the vibraphone; surely it is, like the pedal steel, one of the most impossible instruments to master, no? I mean, you sorta need equal facility with rhythm and melody. Like, you probably need to have serious drum chops and also know theory and stuff, right? So, just the fact that 3/5 of the band is able to do this seems pretty unlikely / incredible.

I realize I am about twenty years late in talking "instrument prowess" in relation to Tortoise (I recall snoozing through many conversations like this in the nineties), but I dunno, I think I'm maybe just ready for Tortoise now or something.

I revisited It's All Around You and it's actually even better than I remembered it -- it flows like a perfect DJ mix.

I need to catch up with all the stuff between Standards and The Catastrophist. I may have heard those records when they came out, but don't remember actually, you know, listening to them.

Also, I'm probably in the minority here, but I think of the three guitarists, Parker is my favorite (at least in terms of Tortoise members, not necessarily outside of that)

I love Parker with Tortoise and Isotope and sometimes with other groups. He's uneven. I feel like he sounds like he doesn't practice enough for what he tries to do, which describes a lot of those guys.

Lots of Tortoise vibes on the upcoming Jeff Parker album.

Not vibes as in -raphones, I take it?

For vibraphones, check this album where Parker also plays on.

In the run up to the US election, Tortoise Twittered/Facebooked "If you're voting Trump, destroy your Tortoise albums" [I'm paraphrasing].

The response from their "fans" made me less surprised at the outcome of the election than I might otherwise have been.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roYvd11z0AM

Keep meaning to pick this up. It's a tad pricey. His most recent album didn't knock me out, but I guess this is an entirely different thing?

It sounds good. I'd buy it straight away if it was on CD ...

Djed is absolutely wonderful, three or four amazing tracks in one. I wish even half their other stuff was like that, but it leaves me very cold indeed.

Vaguely related but I've been listening to the Bundy Brown Directions in Music a fair bit recently. One of those records I've had for donkey's, but never fully kind of 'owned' if you know what I mean. I think it's partly because, on the surface, it seems to be a fairly minor exercise, the product of 3 days in a studio with a bunch of (very talented) like-minded musicians. But under all that are some seriously engaging atmospherics, and what feels like a world of unexplored potential. It's great. And, hey, Mogwai got a career out of it, so that's something, I suppose.

that's a record i've had since it came out and go back to all the time. i think it's great and not in a particularly minor way. i prefer it to any tortoise or mogwai album.

Djed is absolutely wonderful, three or four amazing tracks in one. I wish even half their other stuff was like that, but it leaves me very cold indeed.

Ever heard "Gamera"?

"Gamera" continues with "Goriri" on the flip-side of that 12", one of my favorite things they've ever done.