When I first caught the Bound Stems in concert, they sounded like an economical take on math-rock-- winding guitars and tricky time signatures, but with pop songs I could still remember after stumbling home. That was nearly two years ago, when they had only a couple self-released EPs to their name. I saw them perform again recently and they'd drafted Janie Porche to sing near-constant backup and play about 18 different instruments, in the process becoming a many-legged amorphous blob of swiftly-changing styles, sometimes three or four times per song. Unfortunately, Porche doesn't appear on The Logic of Building the Body Plan, a generous seven-track EP, nor does she play on the band's first full-length that's already completed but yet to be released.
So it's strange that Bound Stems' first release with real distribution is a transitional one, recorded after their album was finished. Bound Stems take cues from meat'n'potatoes indie here, but take substantial risks with composition, and the songs are just as likely to run aground as succeed. The lovely collage art in the booklet that overbears the nearly illegible lyric sheet couldn't be more evocative of the music therein-- several thrilling moments, but with a few songs just short of a payoff or a thread to hold onto.
The band recalls a lot of well-established names here: Bobby Gallivan's double-tracked vocals and wistful, rolling syllables recall Issac Brock's delivery in calmer moments, the best tracks lean on woozy crescendos á la Arcade Fire, and the band switches gears as unexpectedly as Fiery Furnaces (there's even two spoken-word elderly woman interludes). But their ambitious and hungry guitar/bass/keyboards/loops line-up is more jagged and distorted than any of those acts.
It's an immersive listen, but not always a cohesive one. Opener "Crimes & Follies" builds from a slow, syncopated strum into a heavy swing just to toss its momentum to the wind with a meandering instrumental passage, and the many segments of tracks like "Totipotent" and "My Kingdom for a Trundle Bed"-- with jangling guitars, bubbling electronic textures, reverberating keyboards, and deep distorted basslines-- collide less than gracefully.
There's two big exceptions, though: "Wake Up, Ma and Pa Are Gone" breezes past on gorgeous guitars and a sprightly drum pattern (courtesy of Harvey Danger refugee Evan Sult), almost slows to a halt, then pulls up for a speaker-blowing crescendo. Then there's "Risking Life and Limb for the Coupon", where Gallivan stays calm while the rhythm leaps and lurches until the cathartic full-band sigh of the finale with memorable calm/frantic call-and-response singing. (Incidentally, both of these tracks are taken from their unreleased full-length.) Bound Stems may be guilty of showing all their cards at once and rarely relaxing for the sake of the song, but its worth it to catch them now-- before they become another entirely different band.
