Cougar's recent performance at Tonic in New York City commanded a wide audience to stonerish attention, heads nodding to the unstructured wash of cymbals that opened the show. Drummer D.H. Skogen-- his arms flaying, eyes closed, and head spinning in a moment of expressive searching-- depicted a rare moment on the band's debut album Law when the rhythmically obedient elements of laptop, guitars, drums, and bass resisted the precise electronic matrix and let loose. But as with the progression of the album, the show soon turned to harnessing layers in icy, crystalline symmetry.
Yet the audience would not desist from their dancing interpretations of this light, easy, but nonetheless cosmic music, which draws rumbling field recordings and tinny sprinklings of drums into a mix of complex guitar loop duets and the occasional flourish of piano. There is indeed a massive following of this band's underpopulated instrumental aesthetic, which blends the TV-commercialized career of the inventive Penguin Café Orchestra or the expeditionary rock of Explosions in the Sky with the subtler gyrations of slow, acoustic-powered pop.
Particularly on "Interracial Dating", Cougar crafts a bittersweet, innocent wash of trickling guitars that counter each other like diffident sea creatures in courtship. Trent Johnson and Dan Venne here lack some of the melodic adventurousness that, when paired with faster tempos, create some of the album's strongest work later on. But "Dating" remains powerful, as light, echoed drums and intricate plucking patterns hammer the abstract, private complexity of the song's title with a dramatized, urgent, yet impossibly metered closeout.
Alternately homemade and studio recorded, Law retains an intimacy that can't shed its improvisational jam quality, yet it often sounds stiff and computerized. What then makes the assonant depths of "Lifetime Ranger"'s bass and guitar duet memorable is realizing that none of these standalone tapestries need be further orchestrated post facto. On the contrary, the band thrives, if shyly and with too intense a concentration, on the live performance.
As soundtrack to a personalized nightscape, Law's close-at-ear pieces are peppered with percussive intros "One" through "Five". These 40-odd-second slots are far from negligible, expressing energy amidst the occasional humdrum, atmospheric bemusement. As the album winds on, tracks like "The Mosaicist", the unprecedented, messy rock ballad "Merit", and "Black Dove" seem to venture further out, picking up speed, adding layers and melodic development without simply throwing sound onto a pile. The band's rigid attentiveness pays off on the latter track. Here, a beautiful string arrangement and plugging bass line speaks to bravado that should be showcased more on subsequent releases.
