For a pair of bros most frequently labeled as sound sculptors or colossal drone makers, Growing's Joe Denardo and Kevin Doria have rarely shied from beats or rhythms. Granted, the rhythmic play in their work might not have always been the focus, but, live and on record, the duo's use of stereo effects has long given their tracks a tidal, back-and-forth motion. Since leaving Kranky in 2004, Growing have avoided flatlining hums altogether. On 2006's Color Wheel, when they were still collecting Eno and Earth comparisons, the effects through which Denardo and Doria routed their guitar and bass-- and the way those pieces fit, phasing and lacing up and down, in and out-- gave tracks like "Fancy Period" and "Green Pastures" tiny but distinct rhythms.
They kept at it: On both the 2008 EP Lateral and the 2008 LP All the Way, Growing emphasized that metric aspect, making it obvious by adding actual beats ("Rave Pie Only") or, more frequently, by stacking gorgeous tones that created incidental rhythm. It comes as little surprise, then, that Growing have now made the next beat-driven advance, adding a third member, vocalist and sampler controller Sadie Laska, and shifting the balance of their focus from tones graced by rhythms to rhythms graced by tones. But there's always a downbeat: It doesn't work, at least not yet.
Growing have been at their best when they've been most immersive, when they let the listener slip into their atmosphere of ideas. And that-- not this newly pronounced dependence on rhythms and vocals-- is why PUMPS! is so underwhelming. Growing's approach is uncharacteristically undeveloped here, as the trio never seems to know for what exactly what it's aiming. On "Massive Dropout", they stunt an interesting, textural beat with unnecessary electronic interference. After all, it's easier to hide ancillary sounds beneath a roar that saturates the tape than beneath a drum machine that leapfrogs from one meter to the next.
Closer "Mind Eraser" succeeds where its predecessors don't, committing to one idea and stretching it across the album's most vibrant eight minutes. The beat-- quick, skittering bursts of cheap electronic drums-- enters at the top, followed by repeated, short stabs of noise that, relative to the rest of the kit, feel like a heavy-metal kick drum. Laska eases in samples of clipped phrases, pushing them and pulling them through the mix. Chopped and twisted, they bounce off of the beat and each other, different colors of light colliding in funhouse mirrors.
Otherwise, the new Growing jumps from thought to thought, with very few of them being very interesting. "Camera '84" lays spectral vocals beneath a big, dumb beat, adding veins of noise wherever they fit. It's a confused, ricocheting piece of music that never finds its groove. Similarly, the transitions are mostly circumstantial, half-baked attempts to make a somewhat seamless album. The wood block pitter-patter that emerges with only a dozen seconds left in "Challenger" and exits six seconds into "Highlight" has little to do with either track. With nearly 30 seconds left, "Highlight" sloughs the beat and the electronic pops and plinks flying from channel to channel, forcing a jump into the long drift that leads to "Drone Burger", the album's two-minute acknowledgment of Growing's sprawling past. It's a painful reminder: Growing, the half-dance trio, need to put in a lot of work before they can augment that legacy.
