MUSIC

The Cooler, Bristol (Sat 5 Nov)

A wrapt, standing-down-the-front crowd for a support act? Something’s afoot here. Given sonic sculptures decorated with Sternly Bellowing Man Folk Voice and Mist-Drifts-Across-The-Moors Woman Folk Voice, it’s tempting to label Tomorrow We Sail (pictured below) thusly: if My Latest Novel were a history of post-rock. But we shan’t. Post-rock, though pretty, is so largely uninventive it doesn’t become them at all. So we’ll throw in the crystalline-emotioned, studied dynamics of Low, and then figure just how we’ll also try to communicate the breadth at play here. Seven smart minds fully exploring all available potential, long songs bleeding into one another, thrown into relief by the occasional set-piece. To wit: a spectacular drone riff wrought by two violins and an accordion. It could lift mountains clear of ground with its torsional strength, but instead simply beckons an all-hands crashing, flashing passage – drums on hyper-pound, all others responding in kind – before abruptly standing alone once more. This was the Leeds’ group’s Bristol debut – setting up an online petition to demand their swift return is thoroughly recommended.

Meantime, it’s a big night for one of Bristol’s lesser-sung, should-be-sung acts, This Is My Normal State (pictured above): their final gig with Yuka Kurihara’s gliding dove of a voice out front (she hits a mean, occasional, drummer-augmenting snare, too). Farewell, also, to Rhiannon Wilkinson’s texturising cello. It’s high class fare, guitars by turn single note shimmering and spacey, overall sound four parts slow and considered to one part urgent and frantic. It’s also, on the debit side of the ledger, industry standard. Thus, as they arrive at the personnel-changing fork in the road, TIMNS have a choice: delivering more of the immaculately rendered same; or taking all they’ve learned and slotting those finely engineered pieces into a sound only they could deliver, utterly distinct. The potential is undoubtable. (Julian Owen)

Copyright Julian Owen 2011