Eccentricity's a tough trick to play. A willful refusal to obey the rules of one's genre and an urge to be different for the sake of difference can get you pretty far (where would the Flaming Lips be without it?), especially if the genre in question is particularly ossified or tired. On the other hand, eccentricity's also the cheapest ticket to Novelty City. This is especially true if your genre is, essentially, a reaction to another genre, a self-designated rule breaker; in which case, who's to say what's eccentric and what's just plain silly? For example, post-rock: what if, say, Godspeed You Black Emperor! developed a penchant for hand puppets and fake blood, and enlisted people in bunny suits to spout off about the IMF in French?
I'm just afraid that the Mercury Program will, or have already, come to be known as "the dudes with the vibraphone". When they took the instrument up after their first album, just as they were phasing out vocals, it certainly seemed like a device for consciously distancing themselves from conventional rock. And, despite the fact that vibes were already both a quirk and a cliche in post-rock, it worked wonders for their next release, the lauded EP All the Suits Began to Fall Off. The distinct, clean tone of the vibes created the somewhat comforting illusion that there was a lead instrument (when this wasn't necessarily the case) and balanced the moments of distortion that the band had skimmed off the top of their previous sound. Still, questions remained: had the Program cut themselves too thin of a slice from the Tortoise pie? And: if they like their vibraphone so much, why don't they marry it?
Three out of four band members do indeed bang the mallets on A Data Learn the Language. But even though they're on every track, the vibes don't sound nearly as prominent here as they did on All the Suits Began to Fall Off, which is a good thing, as more interesting shit tends to go down on this album. Almost all remnants of dynamics-and-distortion histrionics have been purged from the band's sound, leaving them only the dense, Venn-diagram play of interlocking patterns to work with. In the hands of a lesser band, this sort of thing can easily turn rigid; here, it often sounds just as lightweight as it is fraught. Some of the tracks positively levitate; on "Fragile or Possibly Extinct", Whit Travisano's cascading electric piano and Tom Reno's sea-spray guitar almost evaporate. Their touch is light but almost universally expert; even the obligatory electronic manipulation on the first track, "Tequesta", comes off as some of the most tastefully executed I've ever heard, subtly clothing Dave Lebleu's drums in a swarm of clicks.
In fact, the band's best trick-- one which they play throughout the album-- is to convince the listener that they don't exist. Much of the time, it's hard to believe that humans are playing this music, not out of any excessive virtuosity or lack of emotion, but because of the celestial tones Reno and Travisano coax out of their instruments and the sharp focus of brother Sander Travisano's spartan bass and Lebleu's drums. Maybe they manage this because they're manufacturing this sound using the sort of conventional instrumentation that we're conditioned to accept without thought. Maybe, because of this, the vibraphones tend to stick out like severed thumbs. When the band uses them for anything other than texture, you're forced to entertain the idea that there is, in fact, a guy playing the vibraphone here. And the vibes, by being so distinctive, emphasize the repetitiveness of the patterns they're playing, while the other instruments have a back door into your brain.
Some of the slightly weaker tracks in the middle of the album are hobbled by this (especially the second half of "To/From Iceland", which sounds cribbed directly from the "Interval" songs on Tortoise's TNT). The band, though, has come too far to let this stop them, and the last three tracks are proof. "You Yourself Are Too Serious" slowly unwinds its spiky, leapfrogging guitar and piano figures into a gorgeously simple conclusion; "Gently Turned on Your Head" tilts and rolls without ever going nauseous; and "Sultans of El Sur" ends on a decidedly forceful note, with a monumental rhythmic barrage crashing against a cathedral of echoed guitar. Obviously, the band doesn't need a gimmick; in the end, though, the fact that they have one doesn't detract too much from the music.
