Blues Control –
Valley Tangents
(Drag City)

I’ll be honest with you: despite having set myself the task of writing about this new Blues Control record, I don’t really want to write about it. I’m not really sure what to say. Critical consensus seems to be equally undecided on quite what angle to take regarding the music herein, with Patrick Masterton at Dusted framing the album as the group’s slide toward introspective comfort following their relocation to the Pennsylvania suburbs, whilst Noel Gardner at The Quietus instead heard them embarking on a ruthless attempt to stay ‘one step ahead of the game’ in their particular corner of the music world.

And if neither of these interpretations quite jibe with what I’m hearing, well… aesthetic uncertainty has got to be a plus, right? In fact, a good challenge is precisely what we’ve come to anticipate from Blues Control, a duo who have been consistently redrawing the boundaries of the kind of music they make since their self-titled in 2004, and have scarcely put a foot wrong yet. Despite initially growing out of the kind of free-improv noise-psych stuff that often finds itself mired in myopic self-indulgence and repetition, Blues Control’s music often seems headed in precisely the opposite direction; everything I’ve heard from them as I’ve caught up with their catalogue over the past few years has been powerful and deliberate in both conception and execution - inventive, captivating and just, well… good satisfyin’ listening really. I guess things reached an apex of sorts with the record that first bought them to my attention, 2010’s superb ‘Local Color’, whose mixture of sheet metal guitars, Eno-ish drift and weirdo swamp ambience gets about as close as an ambient/drone album can to kicking ass and taking names.

Which brings us to ‘Valley Tangents’, hotly anticipated follow-up for the relative big boys as Drag City. And…. yeah. It’s a bit of a puzzler really. Surprises are to be expected by this stage, but whereas Blues Control’s pretty handbrake turns have been pleasing, refreshing and fun, this stuff is a bit more obtuse. Not ‘bad’ or disappointing as such, but it swiftly becomes very difficult to quantify what constitutes ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in a sound-world like this.

It’s there, it happens when you press play, and it’s fully of odd and noteworthy noises, but there are no threads you can really drag out of this - no easy context or visceral engagement to hang yr hat on. It’s a bunch of sound that it’s very difficult to really form an opinion on, and nothing gets a critic’s back up like not having an opinion.

So, probably best just fall back on a straight description.

‘Love’s a Rondo’ begins promisingly enough, with a woozy ‘evil triad’ type riff picked out on fuzz guitar, anchored by a looping pattern of low end piano notes. More curious is the emergence of a clean, overdubbed electric piano track, playing uncertain modal jazz improvisations, much in the manner of a precocious teenager nervously showing off in a school assembly. There’s a kinda naivety to it that is quite refreshing, but it’s an odd inclusion for sure. And if that wasn’t enough to raise our hackles, they only went and made a video with a fucking mime in it:

Track two, ‘Iron Pigs’. is pretty nuts, opening with what sounds like someone teaching a ‘Final Fight’ arcade machine to sing in tune, adding deliberately flat synchronised horn riffs and further ‘exploratory’ butter-fingered guitar-work, the various elements eventually harmonising to startling and pleasing effect. Probably my favourite track on the record.

‘Opium Den – Fade to Blue’ furthers this album’s deliberate reclamation of “cheesy” sound sources, conjuring a bizarro kung fu fantasia of Casio panpipes and wittering space-flutes. Drum machine hums like a hovering insect, and… there’s that damn piano again.

Rhythm track on ‘Walking Robin’ sounds like a reverbed basketball being dribbled across an empty hall, which is nice. Yet more common room Chick Corea worship subsequently predominates however, with perma-stoned bass jumping on-board for a trip to a swinger’s party I think I’d rather avoid.

Distracted solo piano hi-jinks open ‘Open Air’, sounding much like an evening practice session you might hear wafting across on the breeze from a neighbouring house on a quiet evening. Some manner of elfin woodwind joins in for a kind of relaxed, instinctive improv jam that is actually rather pleasant. An experience at least on par with sticking your head out of the window at night and listening to the sounds outside.

Oh no, we’re back at the swinger’s party for ‘Gypsum’, and things aren’t going well. Far be it from me to cast aspersions on a musician’s technical ability, but when the pianist just starts clumsily running up and down a scale a few times, we’ve all got to question what we’re doing here. Thankfully more interesting stuff waits in the wings, and the halfway mark finds us stuck in some kind of slowed down k hole of drifting abstract sound waves… until the pianist and his/her pals crash back in to reclaim their stage, ending the album with a few minutes of lolloping hippie-funk and a weird tingling sensation in the back of our brains, where our preconceived notions about what kind of music is good used to be.

So there ya go. Strangely enough, my overall impression of ‘Valley Tangents’ is that it kind of resembles a collection of obscure Ennio Morricone or Bruno Nicolai deep cuts. Not their ‘hits’ or the kind of main themes that people know them for, but more the kind of oddball “track # 6 on the OST of some forgotten sexploitation movie no one outside of Italy has ever seen” eyebrow-raisers where they let it all hang out. Viewed as such, ‘Iron Pigs’ and ‘Opium Den’ certainly achieve lift-off on a kind of “whoa, this’ll blow minds on my next mix tape” nerd appeal level, whilst others stay safely within the “well…. at least it’s unexpected” zone.

Beyond that, I make no claim toward knowing what the hell was going on in the minds of Blues Control during the making of this record, so - it is what it is. Enjoy it if you see fit. Somehow I doubt its creators would demand any heavier analysis than that from us.

Labels: album reviews, Blues Control, late night listening