Toe
Variant
[Truckstop/Atavistic]
Rating: 0.8
"While I do not profess to understand the 'modern' music, I have long
been involved in the development of the mammoth as an instrument. In
my earliest experiments, a trio of courageous musicians produced the
most remarkable assortment of sounds from a single properly tuned and
securely tethered beast."
Lately, author/illustrator David Macauley's been hosting a PBS series
on architecture. Pretty smart, talented guy. That last bit's from
1988's The Way Things Work, his tome of plain-talk and illustrated
explanations of commonplace devices. Could Macauley have known that so
many of his juvenile-aimed jaunts describing a fictional cartoon mammoth's
integral place in technology's advance might so aptly comment upon Toe's
Variant some twelve years hence?
Apparently, Toe's been on that "mammoth-as-instrument" trajectory Macauley
wrote about for some time. Here, leader David Pavkovic's "securely
tethered beast" is Yoko Noge, whose Japanese avant-nightclub rants render
Variant's opener, "Absolutism 2," a tribal-- some might say
"pachydermal"-- throwback to art-rock's pre-history. "Vacation" again
features Yoko, this time woolier still as the nonsense-spewing, blue
velvet-sporting chanteuse fom a bar scene I'm relieved David Lynch had
the good sense not to film. Pavkovic's drums stop and start jazzily
enough in the dark heart of this number and his Oval-esque keys trickle
along congruently. But when Yoko lumbers into Pavkovic's pauses, the
experimentalist tone is punctured in ways all too familiar to those of
us who never preferred John Lennon's "better half."
"Although the instruments often grew restless during rehearsals, the
twelve musicians, comprising four tusk-tappers, four stomach-thumpers
and four tail-twangers, became highly proficient at playing them."
Hmm... a fantastical modern mammoth orchestra. Toe (formerly Toe 2000--
modern!) comprises an ensemble just about as esoteric as Macauley
envisions, but much less interesting to listen to. Pavkovic and Noge
are joined by Tortoise phenom and consistently listenable Jeff Parker
on guitar. His loose and understated phrasework opens "Absolutism 1,"
but is brutally stampeded by Yoko Noge's unaccompanied intrusion just
after the four-minute mark. The ubiquitous Doug McCombs contributes in
your basic "guy from Tortoise" mode, his talents lost to over-sampling
on "Vacation," and later, to Yoko's mewling.
And how sure were you that Tim Kinsella had already wasted enough of
your time? Variant also manages to squeeze in his vocal
panhandling. His pitiable melodrama masquerades as art on no fewer
than three of these tracks, most notably "Totalism." A barely audible
Kinsella whispers exactly the type of drivel I never want to hear again,
timing his utterances to fill the sections of drum-machined lounge
dirge not made hideous by Noge's croaking inane howling: "You will
perform a manuever/ To satisfy your reintroduction." If I'm not
trying very hard to translate exactly what Tim and Yoko are singing
about, it's because, given the context, I couldn't give a shit less.
"The popularity of massed mammoth music reached its peak with the
creation of the Mammoth Tabernacle Choir."
Right now, you're annoyed by my reliance on this gimmick to underscore
the pointlessness of Toe's Variant. I'm guessing that's because
you haven't actually heard Toe's Variant. Its vague and thinly
composed drums-and-synth architecture sways in the wind of Noge's breathy
pretensions, and topples due to its essential songlessness. Of ten
tracks, only "New" commands any attention, a tinkled piano melody dusted
over undulating bass and drums. The track recalls Sam Prekop's solo work,
but is hardly on par with it.
The same way David Macauley's idiotic, mastodon-concerned sidebars
pointlessly interrupt an otherwise informative children's book, Toe
(and Yoko Noge's avant-garbage, in particular) contributes nothing
to the cause it aligns itself with. Like a joke you have to explain,
Variant is very little effort, effortlessly wasted.
-Judson Picco