Slow as a Tortoise

The biggest problem with Tortoise -- and no doubt the source of some recent backlash against the group -- is that the Chicago-based band has never lived up to even the tamest descriptions of their music. The group has been classified as a combination of jazz, dub, ambient, Bossanova, hip-hop, krautrock, and classical minimalism during their ten-year long career. In reality, however, Tortoise is a lot more docile than that Frankenstein-like amalgamation of genres would lead most to believe.

Case in point: "It's all Around You," the band's fourth album, is always in danger of drifting away into quiet, ponderous elevator music. While Tortoise has never been the most aggressive or even the most engaging band around, their music has never sounded as dull and unimpressive as it does here.

It's always a shame to find that a band so frequently touted in the press as revolutionary and adventurous has become pretty boring.

When the group released "Millions Now Living Will Never Die" in 1996, writers and fans were clamoring to catalog and praise the album's opening track, "Djed." At just over 20 minutes, "Djed" was an epic track, one that defines the band's sound to this day and, at the time of its release, catapulted the group to prominence while sending rock critics reeling for new adjectives and musical references.

To say that no one had ever heard anything like "Djed" before is a bit of an overstatement. Yet suddenly here was a song that didn't fit any of the easy categorizations: it bobbed happily along like krautrock but indulged in jazz-like digressions; had sharp, chiming tape-loops seemingly cribbed from Brian Eno or Philip Glass but belied a fondness for the hollow ambience of dub.

Eventually, everyone got tired of trying to figure out who Tortoise sounded like and relegated the group to "post-rock;" that uncertain and still vague genre-classification for bands that are more interested in texture and experimentation than hooks or lyrics.

After "Millions," Tortoise released two more albums before their current one. "TNT" took the scope and ambition of "Djed" and broke it into manageable pieces. At the same time, however, their music seemed to be losing focus, becoming more ambient and formless.

Then came 2001's "Standards", marking the group's biggest departure from their sound to date. There was something refreshingly raw about "Standards." Unafraid to let squalls of feedback invade the band's usually clean recordings, guitarist Jeff Parker's playing was huge and forceful. Following suit, John McEntire, Tortoise's drummer and producer, sounded unhinged as he pounded out complicated time signatures on his kit.

After said album's frenetic change of pace, "It's all Around You" feels more like a step back than anything else for Tortoise. And while there are a few tracks that manage to capture the "Standards"-vibe -- "Dot/Eyes" and closer "Salt the Skies" -- Tortoise's sound is too restrained, too happy to loop some mumbling passages on a vibraphone and call it a day.

It's the reigning-in of Tortoise's rhythm section that is most noticeable on "It's all Around You." One of the band's original trademarks was the skittering drum patterns that were always interesting to hear, even if nothing else on the track was. What we get on tracks like "Crest" and "By Dawn" are controlled martial beats or stuttering hiccups, not the usual Tortoise fare.

If there's any positive aspect of "It's All Around You," it's that the album has a transitional feel to it. As songs like the title track and "Stretch (You are All Right)" evidence, Tortoise's latest album is an attempt to combine their older sound with the more assertive music from "Standards." And who knows, maybe with their next album the band will finally live up to all that genre mixing and matching that the critics are so fond of.



Tortoise will appear at the Roxy Tuesday, April 20th at 9.