It's All Around You

04/27/2004 9:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Roger Park

There is an understated gracefulness that wraps Tortoise’s fifth album, It’s All Around You, in ribbons of soothing and hypnotic layers. For over 10 years, this Chicago-based quintet has created some of the most innovative and spacey instrumental music–-but without all the pretentiousness and self-indulgency their Prog-rock predecessors had. Their music is accessible yet highly unique in its complex mutations. On songs like “Crest,” the band eloquently unfolds petals of airy keyboards and sparse melodies over downbeat foundations. Jazzy textures and slinky funkiness is elevated in the unmistakably catchy “Stretch (You Are All Right)” while more aggressive and angular transformations are heard on the drum-heavy “Dot/Eyes.” While many of the songs lend towards the cinematic, album closer “Salt The Skies,” with its complex ascending and descending structures and tempo shifts, is clearly the most evocative and adventurous. Even with a lot of abstract tendencies, “It’s All Around You” remains remarkably catchy in its high groove factor. Not quite jazz, not quite electronica, and not quite indie rock, Tortoise continues to define and evolve their own compelling cosmology.