You ever see the first Star Trek movie? The one that was basically just a "2001: A Space Odyssey" knock off. Then there was that scene where Spock jet-packs through the nebula surrounding V-Ger, the satellite that was sent by America in the 20th century to gather a bunch of knowledge about the universe and bring it back. Remember how the satellite gathered so much information it ended being self-aware, and Spock did that mind-meld with it? There's no way you could forget it, it took up something like twenty minutes in the movie where basically nothing happened. Zammuto's self-titled debut album is something like what I imagine Spock felt after his mind-meld, after which he screamed and was flung back unconscious to the Enterprise.
No, Spock! Don't do it! TOO MUCH KNOWLEDGE!!!!!!!!!
As a fan of head-writer Nick Zammuto's previous band The Books, this release had big shoes to fill. Even up through their last release (2010's The Way Out) The Books had a unique quality to them in that they seemed to capture the experience of being fascinated and intrigued. Their music was the sound of interest, and somewhere within it's dense layering of homemade samples, light vocals with very technical lyrics, and sound bites from old movies and speeches was the essence of stepping out of your own shoes and getting a sense of the way it all fits together. Very weighty and almost anthropological stuff. But alas, as pitchfork reported in January of this last year, The Books are no more.Given Zammuto's prior work, I knew this album would be experimental and a very "smart" album for lack of a better word. With punny titles such as "Too late to Topologize" and "F U C-3PO" this album is not set up for the average listener. With four of the tracks released prior to the album, I became very familiar, and I was not immediately disappointed. Although the songs didn't strike me as being quite as interesting and weighty as The Books material, they were close enough in nature that I was satisfied. Although, I may have spoke to soon.
Never really seen him before, looks like a cool dude.
None of the four previously released tracks were amazing or outstanding. Interesting, but nothing to return to. I kept listening to them over and over perhaps because they were the closest thing to The Books I knew I'd ever get. When listening to the album as a whole, none of the songs really pull together enough to be fully satisfying. The album feels like extraneous experiments compiled together with attempts to be melodic over them. Some of the experiments are interesting, but then you get songs that fall flat, like the poorly named "Zebra Butt." The beginning of the song sounds like a poorly recorded rough draft for a sound que you'd expect to hear in "The Matrix."Perhaps I'm not being fair. Perhaps I'm just too stuck on the past to embrace this new direction Nick Zammuto is taking. The album was not such a disappointment that I won't listen to any new releases. But listening to the album leaves me feeling like I imagine Jean-Luc Picard felt in "All Good Things" when Q took him to the beginning of life on earth, and the chemicals didn't come together in the right way. This album had a bunch of elements that could have turned into something fantastic but just never came together.
2.5/5 stars. What'd you think? Let me know in the comments below!
