The great director Sidney Lumet wrote in his autobiography that the optimal way to divide any film is into thirds, each with its own distinct mood, thrust and pace. It's a concept that works wonderfully in his own films, and the one I've seen that makes the best use of it is Dog Day Afternoon, in which Al Pacino and an associate botch a bank robbery and wind up presiding over a hostage situation that grows gradually more intense as the film progresses. You may not notice the way the film is broken down until reading about how Lumet used everything from lighting and lens filters to the pace of the action and the timing of plot twists in a very deliberate way to alter the way the scenario makes you feel.
This aesthetic can naturally be transposed onto other art forms, but until the late 1980s, recorded music by and large wasn't one of them. Albums were split in half, divided into side A and side B-- and indeed, a lot of albums try to emulate that breakdown even in the CD age. But if there's one thing CDs gave artists as a medium, it's greater flexibility in sequencing and flow, and every once in a while, I notice that same thirds phenomenon (though it stands to reason that most bands aren't quite as calculating about it as Lumet was). A favorite example of mine is Blur's 13, which I've always heard as three "movements," for lack of a better term: the first third is boisterous and direct, the middle third is weird and obscure, and the final third is something of a meeting of the two, a sort of reconciliation of extremes.
Toronto collective Do Make Say Think (or as I enjoy calling them, The Action Verbs) have hit on this rather directly on their newly released fourth album, Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn. The title and sequencing imply a series of three suites, each with its own prevailing mood and feel, and each third is subsequently subdivided into thirds again, with long, developed pieces flanking ambient interludes. It works perfectly, too, as it allows the band to corral the growing diversity of their sound into a format that makes a lot of sense.
Since the release of their dub-influenced self-titled debut, Do Make Say Think have dramatically varied their sound, increasingly utilizing deeper layers and more complex development with each subsequent release, and Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn's first third is immediately more volatile than anything they've done yet: it unfurls chiming guitars over a strange, melting bass figure before bursting into a nearly joyful groove built on scattered drumming and elastic bass. The track straightens out slowly, as horns and distortion build to a head and finally grind themselves to a halt, leaving space for a slow build back into dissonant mayhem, and ultimately turning full circle back to the chiming guitars that began things so calmly nearly ten minutes earlier. "War on Want" serves as the pivot into "Auberge le Mouton Noir", a bed of quivering strings that the latter song buries under brilliant bursts of repetitive guitar before unexpectedly lurching forward into driving rhythms and whirling fragments of melody.
The middle of the album expands on the formula established in the first third, to very different effect. Rising from a freezer blast of icy texture on a pulsing bass, "Outer & Inner Secret" is at first hushed and unhurried, but the band's collective swells can only be contained for so long, and at the five-minute mark, they slip into a morass of arguing guitars over a punk march drumbeat. Unearthly slide guitars rise at the end to forecast "107 Reasons Why", a brief, velvety horn and guitar segue into "Ontario Plates", a staggering instrumental that sags under sax and horns, dragging along guitar parts that sound like some sort of post-rock Christmas carol.
But the final third is the most crushing. "Horns of a Rabbit" rises over cymbal, a looped guitar part, electronic squiggles, hymnal organ and a massive drum beat, and just when it feels like it's rising to another loud climax, it retreats to a quiet heartbeat and strummed guitar. From there, the track builds in rhythm and volume, dragging along sharply distorted guitars blaring and violins until it glitches out, channels cutting, instruments bailing, and impassive noise overtaking everything. The noise is called "It's Gonna Rain", and it from the sound and title of it, I'm guessing it was composed mostly of the processed sound of rain hitting a tin roof. Finale "Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!" organizes slowly, finally coalescing into a pretty acoustic guitar and horn serenade brushed by distorted slide guitar and wavering synth. The acoustic instruments beautify the noise that surrounds them, and the music is almost triumphant by the time it hits its closing decrescendo.
In Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn, Do Make Say Think have presented us with their best work yet, a varied and unpredictable album capable of imparting the chill of the winter and the warmth of celebratory joy to you without ever presenting you with a human voice. The way the band breaks up the action makes the album equally digestible as a whole or in three discreet parts taken separately, which is especially nice when you're short on time to just sit and listen to the whole thing. Here, Do Make Say Think have nearly perfected themselves, and made a fantastic album in the process.
