Imagine for a second that you are a member of a four-man experimental rock band. Tonight the inspiration comes from a ancient source: Japan. In a tiny room each instrumentalist picks a corner to set up their amps or drums. Coats are hung from the rafters to baffle what will be hearing loss level of sound. For good measure someone tacky-tapes up pictures of an afro'ed policeman at a karate exibition. Then it begins.
Remember that.
I'll forgive Mike Patton for not even trying to maintain his revelence as long as the product is still compelling (hey, I kind of like Weird Little Boy, so game on). It seemed like Tomahawk was just Faith No More Redux, and that was teriffic; Album of the Year was, for me, headed in a good direction, and the first Tomahawk album seemed to be a more rocking extention of that idea. Mit Gas may be a little less straight forward but is even more compelling.
And Anonymous had me going through the first three tracks. An album made up of songs inspired by Native American songs and material sounds like a great pallett for rock music; Duane Denison was inspired by a stay at an Indian Reservation while on tour, so the idea is coming from a sincere place. Fire that baby up!
Then. . .
A funny thing happened as I got to "Red Fox". The timbre of the instruments went south, from "adding to the feel of the concept" to "hey, these were left over from the Lovage sessions!" English lyrics added to the music and got clunky (it worked for The Director's Cut, I know, but it was only used sparingly there. Imagine putting a french fry into a kiddie pool full of ketchup. Too much) "Antelope Ceremony" sounds like a track lost from The Man From Utopia.
By this time I had made my way through the cd case and learned that 1) Kevin Rudiments had left the band, and 2) Duane Denison and John Stainer [guitar and drums, respectively] recorded their parts in Nashville [geetar and skins, thankee] and mailed them to Mike Patton in San Francisco [-- a gay joke--, respectively] to dub over the vocals.
Say what you want about how everyone does it now, but the chemistry of proximity alone helps, and it probably could have helped this album. After a while the idea of the sound, the timbre, of the album falls apart into each person's individual goal. Mike Patton might be a genius, but a band is a band, not a bunch of people. If the whole album kept up with the first three tracks, I'd be loving it. Instead I'll think of playing nearly racist Asian pentachords on a keyboard, getting more and more disjointed as the little band in the little room disjoins the idea together. Like bands do.
