Do Make Say Think: Other Truths
Meditative New Effort Attempts to Do More With Less
Do Make Say Think
Other Truths
Released on Oct 20, 2009
That the four tracks making up the latest offering by Canadian mainstays Do Make Say Think are named for the group itself suggests that the group has found a new challenge in a career full of challenging moments: a concept record where the concept, like, is the band, man. What we get, however, is not so much a challenge as a band comfortable in its own skin, mostly playing it safe. While DMST’s impeccable musicianship and an occasional flair for the dramatic make the record a nice listen, Other Truths lacks the near-overload of ideas that makes prior efforts by the group remain vital years after their release.
Other Truths is ostensibly an attempt at a song cycle of sorts, encompassing the band’s sound in four concise statements. While “retread” would be too strong a rebuke, the album’s tracks feel more like slightly divergent variations of a proven formula. Perhaps the band considers this more reined-in version of itself an experiment of sorts. Where prior DMST tracks contained multiple “movements” and sometimes-abrupt changes in mood, Other Truths finds the band exploring the space within the confines of four distinct ideas, one for each song.
Taken on their own, each of the tracks on Other Truths are focused and very solid. Echoes of fellow post-rock instrumentalists Mogwai abound on opener “Do,” an angular rocker that rides a guitar line nicely to a horn-filled crescendo, before a dreamlike coda paraphrases the memorable melody of Ten Rapid (and blue jean commercial) standout “Summer.” “Make” is a lilting number that sees the band exploring its familiar jazz influences while injecting spurts of vocal harmony and a nicely teasing synthesizer line that never quite comes in to the foreground. The track’s cacophonous peak is fitting and feels as though it has been reached organically, but is nonetheless a slight letdown considering its similarity to the progression of the album’s opener.
Ride groove with guitar line, vocal/synth interlude, peak with distorted guitar and horns, rinse, repeat. Yet another fuzzy, extended outro on “Make” does little to stop one from wondering whether the band has deliberately decided to use an album populated by songs named after itself to say the same thing in different ways. And, “Say” continues the pattern. A dark, atmospheric jazz shuffle sets a bleak tone, but soon after a hopeful guitar theme interjects and becomes the focus of the track. Energetic bursts of brass and excellent percussive drumming carry the song to a nice crescendo. At this point, I am running out of ways to describe a “dreamlike coda.” Woozy? Fade-out? Rest assured, there is one.
As the rest of the record’s tracks follow a formula in themselves, closer “Think” establishes the album as a grand restatement of the same pattern followed on each of the first three songs – the opener establishing a theme, the second continuing the theme while delving into slightly darker territory, “Say” peaking with the album’s most complicated guitar work, and “Think” acting as an understated wrap-up to what has come before. The closer is the quietest and shortest of the record’s four tracks, and puts the album to rest both literally and figuratively. Tasteful brushwork on the drums and a sparse, spaghetti western-influenced guitar theme take the fore, and bits of conversation bubbling up from time to time let us know that it is time to make our way to the exit.
In the past, what has set Do Make Say Think apart from many of its instrumental rock contemporaries has been the band’s ability to incorporate seemingly divergent ideas and themes into individual songs, and its steadfast refusal to rely on a formula. Other Truths departs from that in an apparent attempt to distill the band’s sound, and while the result is very, very nice to listen to, we are left wondering if the band has forgotten what made it great in the first place.
High Point
Each track contains a solid idea seen to fruition, and the production is stellar.
Low Point
Flirts with the formulaic. Similar construct of each track makes the album feel as though it is missing something.
Posted by Miguel Harvey on Oct 22, 2009 @ 6:30 am
