It doesn't take an expert to access information or express an opinion. With no qualifications except a keyboard and an Internet connection, anyone can publish simple thoughts on complex ideas for all the world to read. Now that we're instantly able to procure so much data and to proffer so many notions, editing and restraint seem to be slipping more and more out of fashion. Content is a matter of quantity, not quality or precision. Announcing overwhelms analyzing. After all, if everyone is talking, why not say everything you think, as emphatically as possible, and see what sticks? I tweet. I know how it goes.
That's what's most surprising about Constellations, the fourth album by Austin instrumental ensemble Balmorhea. Instead of going for the quick cinch or the grand statement, the quintet focuses its sound. Eschewing the need for frequent climaxes, Balmorhea practice patience across the group's most satisfying LP to date. Constellations begs for more rather than delivering all of the goods all of the time. Perhaps that's an old-fashioned concept-- demanding the sort of patience and attention that technology's made obsolete. But at this point, it's exactly the move Balmorhea needed to make.
In retrospect, Balmorhea's first three albums seem packed with enthusiasm, each new track presenting another of the band's ideas. On 2008's Rivers Arms, Balmorhea-- then a duo of multi-instrumentalists Michael Muller and Rob Lowe, recording with a guest string section and guitarist-- paired acoustic miniatures and grand piano anthems with musique concrète foundations and electroacoustic experiments. By the time Balmorhea recorded 2009's All Is Wild, All Is Silent, they'd assembled a full band with drums, banjo, upright bass, more strings, and more guitars. They put the sextet to heavy-handed use: Many tracks employed a combination of marching drums, strident violins, group shout-alongs, and aggressive guitar strums. As involving as those records are, they're also a bit exhausting, so busy that they're better suited for quick bursts than obsessive spins.
Constellations, [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| however, is the sort of record you'd like to call home-- fitting since, after albums themed with water and land, it's their attempt to describe the cosmos with sound. The band's most concise record to date, Constellations never overreaches or demands attention. Its rich textures push it past the point of background music, and its gorgeous melodies serve as anchors for even the sparest moments. Opener "To the Order of Night" does both, setting a gentle piano theme adrift in a wide, reverb-warped atmosphere. Space and silence are paramount throughout. "Bowsprit" might have the biggest build here, but it depends as much on rests as it does on note. An acoustic guitar introduces the tune, stopping and starting frequently. The violin that glides in and out is as interesting when it exits as when it enters.
Nowhere is Balmorhea's newfound temperance more surprising and exciting than "On the Weight of Night", a track whose title suggests a crescendo worthy of Texas brethren Explosions in the Sky. Balmorhea expand their toolkit here with slowly walking electric bass, winding organ sustains, and a drum kit that ambles and teeters. Sonically, the track suggests Sigur Rós' "Untitled 7", a 13-minute epic from (). Sigur Rós used these same sounds as a launching pad, leaping into loudness and drama; Balmorhea may have headed in the same direction two years ago, rushing to a climax that's already been mastered. Here, they control the impulse, using the low, lingering tones and a deliberate drum pattern to test the limits of the ceiling, not punch their way through it. They sustain the feeling through closer "Palestrina", an ingenuous epilogue that uses bowed cymbals, long violin tones, and sweeping, resonant guitar chords to translate what Christian Fennesz does with a computer to a full band. For Balmorhea, a group that's carefully restrained and edited itself here despite every trend that demands otherwise, it's a perfectly human closing gesture.
