Aloha
Sugar
[Polyvinyl; 2002]
Rating: 8.0
Some college kid told Aloha that they were great to study to and
it's been haunting them ever since. How could their whirlwind,
vibraphone-driven post-rock get stuck in the background? Shouldn't
it at least be distracting? As they finished their second
full-length, Sugar, bassist Matthew Gengler wrote on their
website: "This year I'm pushing for more 'anthemic pelvic rockers'
and fewer 'heartfelt ballads.'"
And sure enough, after an attention-getting percussion intro,
Sugar leaps into a song that pins your ears back like an
extreme rollercoaster. "They See Rocks" vaults through its chord
changes on Gengler's moon-walking bass and the one-man massacre of
Cale Parks on drums. It has the lurching, exhilarating feel of
Aloha's first albums, but this time the arrangement is bigger:
Eric Koltnow's signature vibraphone mixes with electric piano and
distorted guitar into molten rock candy.
It's their loudest album, but the band still sound like music geeks:
they favor pulsing rhythms to rock beats, and "It Won't Be Long" even
echoes Steve Reich. On other tunes, they finally sound as jazzy as
they've always threatened to be-- specifically, they're reminiscent
of 70s fusion, with its driving rhythms and vague sense of conservatory
educations. You can picture the dusty vinyl in their collections by
bands like Weather Report and Eberhard Weber's Colours.
They're not the first post-rock band to be serious instrumentalists,
but they keep their chops in line by focusing on the songwriting.
The mini-epic "Let Your Head Hang Low" and the exotic segues of
"Thieves All Around Us" both fit inside five minutes, and the
disturbingly titled "Balling Phase" may be their most ecstatic anthem
yet. Tony Cavallario is also gaining confidence as a singer: his
vocals are clearer and louder in the mix, but he's still earnest and
direct, making sure he earns every high note and big chorus.
Where their earlier songs were sometimes fragmentary, the material on
Sugar is better developed, as each composition hold its own
under independent scrutiny. As before, Aloha edits the songs
together into continuous blocks of music, to replicate their live
shows. However, this aspect also makes Sugar less fun than
their last album, That's Your Fire, where the fast and slow
songs hurtled into each other and shorter pieces of tunes ran into
sprawling textural epics. To some listeners it sounded cobbled
together, but to others, That's Your Fire was one of the
more inspired post-rock albums of the past few years.
Sugar needs more of that variety. Aloha throws everything they
have-- their biggest arrangements and most belted-out lyrics-- at
almost every song on the album. Near the end, "Dissolving" and "I
Wish No Chains Upon You" each sound like just more anthemic bricks in
the wall: either the band or the listener feels a little tapped. And
Sugar could use more of the slow, spare tunes that Aloha was
known for: in fact, the one thing this album truly lacks is one of
the trademark, vaguely sappy ballads that the band is obviously
trying to avoid. They might have been worried about getting
typecast, but earlier songs like "Roanoke Born" and "Saint Lorraine"
were-- and there's nothing wrong with it-- really fucking pretty.
One or two of these per album won't make anyone think they're soft.
Besides, I can't study over all this racket!
-Chris Dahlen, May 15th, 2002