fontanelle - n. (from MF fontenele, dim. of fontaine fountain) - any of the spaces closed by membranous structures between the uncompleted angles of the parietal bones and the neighboring bones of a fetal or young skull.

"Spaces closed": Certainly. Fontanelle plugs the gaping hole torn in post-rock by Dawn Smithson's departure from Jessamine. This new self-titled organism features the remains of that once-fair flower; Jessamine guitarist Rex Ritter and keyboardist Andy Brown are joined here by drummers Michael Faeth and Mat Morgan, keyboardist Paul Dickow, and pianists/guitarists Charlie Smyth and Brian Foote.

"Uncompleted": Yeah, at first it seems like that. Despite the sheer size of the Fontanelle roster, serious vacuums yawn at Jessamine's lovers throughout these six tracks. Though an uncanny and reverent reconstruction and revision of Jessamine's improvisational fusion, the cavity implicit in these recordings is vocal. Where Dawn Smithson's undulating croon once tied Jessamine's instrumental strands together, her absence here allows those same strands room for manic growth, sending them askew and fractured. Recall, though, that "askew" and "fractured" are non-synonymous with "bad." But dialectics, aside...

"Membranous structures": These compositions could aptly be described just so. But think of the stretched skin of a delicate painted canvas rather than a barrier stressed to its breaking point. To call these pieces "jazzy" would be very easy and partially accurate. To call them "post-rock" would align them with the late throes of a musical tradition to which they squarely do not belong. Rather, Fontanelle builds in both senses of the word-- they assemble structures from disparate other pieces, and gradually evolve over the course of their "songs."

"Neighboring bones": I suppose those would be the songs (note the lack of quotations) left tawdry and fossilized by the disbanding of Jessamine. Some might call Fontanelle's comparative songlessness a devolution into the amateur ranks of their field. But the expressive arpeggios and simplistic guitar phrasing of the droning "Niagara" would seemingly despise being labelled a "song" in the first place-- they'd argue calmly that their project is to show rather than tell with an audio/ visual aptitude just now solidifying for fellow Kranky darlings Godspeed You Black Emperor.

On "Reflex vs. Parallax," Fontanelle ruminates on Jessamine's mirrored countenance to the tune of a palindromic bassline. A track complete and satisfying in its pure form, this one elicits mild aching for a Low-ish vocal, yet vibrantly colors the album's middle without one. Tortoise's longed-for youth finds breathless memorial on "Telephone Fade," in which lesser acts like the Dylan Group are given a template with which to judge themselves. At the record's extremities, things become even more impressively derivative. Abrupt percussion stops, starts, and flourishes clash head-on with deep-galaxy keyboard blurps and bleeps on "Counterweight," a closer that might have lent miraculous extra weirdness to the highest of Can's kraut-prog.

"Fetal or young skull": Only if Jessamine was Fontanelle's long and productive gestation. Ritter and Brown's newborn cranium may have yet to fully form, but this record caresses the soft concavity just under the silky hair in awe of the potential inside.

-Judson Picco