Tortoise: standards

It's been three years since Tortoise released TNT, the follow-up to 1997's seminal E.P., Millions Now Living Will Never Die. In the meantime, band members have all shined in various side projects such as Brokeback, The Sea and Cake, For Carnation, and Isotope 217. However, 1999's In the Fishtank E.P., a collaboration with The Ex, was a grave letdown. Thus, Tortoise's new release, Standards, begs the question: in this age teeming with wanna-be Tortoises and incestuous side-projects, what more can Tortoise offer us?

Simply put, Standards is deep-fried funk that will leave your groin sticky and unable to stop twitching. On Standards, Tortoise retains some of the subtle, ethereal spareness of its earlier releases, but adorns it with propulsive funk-tronic bass tracks. At the same time, the band explores new terrain in electronic music. Songs change direction with seeming abruptness, but a second listen reveals crafty planning.

Bassist Doug McCombs has said that TNT was very much influenced by the band's interest in different kinds of Latin music, although this is not immediately apparent in the finished product. The album comes together so well because most of the tracks are grounded in the same attempt to find sonically intriguing ways of combining funk, jazz, jungle beats, and whatever comprises the quintessential aerial Tortoise sensibility. Each track discovers new possibilities.

Clearly, Tortoise is much more interested in getting' down this time; even the song titles are less esoteric than in the past and primarily reference drinking ("Speakeasy"), gambling ("Blackjack"), women ("Monica"), and sex ("Eros"). The publicist for the band even suggested that "Monica" should serve as the soundtrack to Yale's porno-in-the-works, The Staxxx.

The first minute of the album, with its layered, unstructured drums and boring guitar part, is its least compelling moment. It's as if the members know what you're all too afraid of hearing. They play it for just long enough to let those pangs of disappointment begin to make themselves felt and then switch to an intensely aggressive drum and bass combo. Soon they complicate it with a harpsichord and all manner of electronic chirps and blips. There are a lot more "ugly" sounds on this album than on previous efforts. They take getting used to but serve to underscore the tensions between the appeal of drum and bass and the cerebral knob-twisting possibilities of electronica.

"Firefly" is a standout because it moves away from the musical ideas shared by the other songs and builds instead on the ideas McCombs has visited with Brokeback. Though anchored by a compelling bass line, it consists of thrumming strings that create an indescribably beautiful space with limited materials. "Eros" starts off sounding like a Steve Reich remix and ends up furthering the funk/electronic ideas explored by the first song. Exquisite, subtly repetitive mallets are layered in with phat beats and electronic squiggles.

Tortoise has always been interested in remixing, and on this album it includes "Eden 2" and "Eden 1". "Eden 1" starts with tight, looping grooves. These eventually become the backdrop for meditative guitar lines that alternate with computer-generated sounds before disintegrating into a hostile wave of electronic diffusion. It plays with, funks up, and redefines the standard set by Eden 2. In this respect, the relationship between the tracks is analogous to that between Standards and previous Tortoise albums. For any discriminating fan, Standards is a new paradise. —Bidisha Banerjee

Back to A&E...