It is hard to produce an atmospheric yet engaging record under the flag of instrumental indie rock, or so-called post-rock. Accordingly, such attempts tend to be overly ambitious; they strive to make something intensely dramatic but come across as plain or clich?©d, tending to retreat into a tired m?©lange of dub bass lines, post-punk-inspired guitar riffs and standard-fare post-rock drum set syncopation.
It seems much of post-rock these days is simply a tribute to older pioneers, a vehicle to show off esoteric tastes rather than a creative vessel for the artist. In the indie crowd, and especially in the post-rock crowd, so many bands wear their music literacy on their sleeve, trying to one-up the listener with obscure influences.
While music literacy is important, it can be hindering if a band boasts its influences too loudly. When a band can tastefully draw upon all of its left-field influences without becoming derivative or testimonial, it is then that great post-rock is made.
Over the last few years San Diego band Tristeza had perfected their particular brand of post-rock. Their 1999 debut album "Spine and Sensory" blended round Pell Mell-style guitar interplay with picturesque Bark Psychosis-style bass lines.
It was an impressive debut, followed up in 2000 by the equally nice krautrock-tinged "Dream Signals in Full Circles." This notable track record makes it all the more disappointing that their new album, "A Colores," falls prey to all the aforementioned pretensions of its genre.
On "A Colores," Tristeza changes things up with their instrumentation, but is still very formulaic. Six years and two albums later, it's the still the same round guitar interplay with the same picturesque bass lines, and even their Pell Mell and Bark Psychosis influences seem more evident than ever.
"A Colores" is Tristeza's first album made in the absence of guitarist and founding member, Jimmy LaVelle. It seems that the remaining members had so many ideas and such a huge void to fill that they didn't want to leave anything out, but they still couldn't truly diverge from their tried and true post-rock rubric.
That said, the album is marked by the incorporation of few new practices, including the use of old analog synthesizers and tape reel music. But in trying to add these new elements to their sound, it seems as if they were trying to put as many cool new ideas on this record as they could, whether or not the ideas worked.
The album opens with "Bromas," an enjoyable song, chugging along at the speed of Jimmy Lehner's motorik motivated beat. The momentum of "Bromas" is quickly quelled by the synth intro of the next track, "Balabaristas," but the track picks up when the beat and the boom come in. The album is then punctuated by an ambient synth interlude, recalling the work of Plaid or possibly the less beat-heavy side of B12.
Past that, the album regains its energy and continues to fill the room with Tristeza's somber sound. Nice enough stuff, but that's basically the only ground the album covers. What you hear in the first few tracks is what you can expect for the entire album - which, when speaking of the album as a self-contained work, isn't bad.
Indeed, as a self-contained work the album is very decent, even worthy of replay. The thing is, taken as an episode of their whole career, the album falls short of living up to Tristeza's established musical prowess.
But such is the spirit of post-rock. A band takes what has worked for them in the past, and, by experimentation, augments it with new ideas and practices. However, as every scientist knows, not all experiments are successes. Tristeza's "A Colores" is one of these experiments: One step forward followed by two steps back.
