Douglas McCombs play(ed?) bass in Tortoise and For Carnation. Brokeback is his side project. I've heard one album so far, and it blows me away. A six-string Fender bass is the central sound here. McCombs has said that it is the combination of twang and low tone that has drawn him to this instrument, which makes perfect sense when you listen to the album. I, uneducated as I am, was not aware that such dynamic sounds could be created by a bass. The songs move on drowsily, creating a somewhat pastoral desert feel comparable to a Ennio Morricone soundtrack (an obvious reference upon hearing the whistler in "The great banks"). The first song, "After the International", sets the pattern. A pretty abstract melody revolving around McCombs' bass guitar gains concretion when a cornet joins in. The second track, "Returns to the orange grove" starts with shuffling train sounds and gradually a dreamy melody, as always revolving around bass, creates a sound so vivid that it feels like you could almost touch the texture of the song. For some reason Anouar Brahem springs to mind. "The field code" has steel guitar (?) and bass and what sounds like maraca. It's not country and to talk about "post-rock" seems wrong-headed too. Perfectly timeless music (what does one mean by that, anyway?) as this is, it's stupid to label it. Field recording from.... is a tremendeously crisp album, a breath of country-side air. Don't get me started on walking on gravel roads & sitting on rocks contemplating the changing of the seasons & watching rusty trains go by. This is impressively cohesive music, too, that really invites one to a scenery, but that said, I would not reduce it to "atmosphere music". What stuck with me after a few listens was the mood, rather than the songs itself, but the melodies grow on you & there are lots of small details to pay attention to.
Usually, when an album is presented as a "side project", you easily think that the whole thing is interesting only to those familiar with the main project of the artist & that this side project thing is the outlet for the introvert experimentation of some artistically undernourished bass player or drummer or yet another lascivious output by an artist involved in a thousand different projects of shaky quality. In this case, that doesn't hold. I am not crazy about Tortoise. In my opinion, this is much better. Field recordings gains my applause simply for revitalizing the only instrument I could manage: the triangle. And introvert? The opposite is rather the case: here's music that strolls & flies & ambles & drifts.
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