It's a difficult thing for a band to accurately reflect the measure of their work in song titles alone, but Fontanelle's really got a contender: "Just, Go, Crazy". Holy Shit. I just can't avoid imagining the smug looks of self-satisfaction on the face of whoever okayed this. How droll! Nothing says "cut loose" like a faint attempt at wordplay, after all. Presumably, the intent here is to be clever through a contradiction produced through the combination of a mandate to have fun and punctuated restraint. The problem is, it's neither clever nor amusing. Instead, this cunningly summarizes everything that's wrong with Fontanelle, Style Drift, and the rapidly decaying post-rock genre itself; the music purports to entertain, but when it truly comes time to pony up the "fun", it generally fails to produce anything beyond cerebral bemusement. To all you turtlenecked purveyors of aural brainteasers: Music needs not only a mind, but a heart.
Fontanelle have clearly not thought this through. They've given us three releases (two full-length) in as many years, and the only thing that's really changed is that each one has become progressively colder than the last. For Style Drift, they play up the electrofunk angle a little more than on 2001's F., but ultimately this is nothing more than yet another excursion into frigid, uncomfortably sparse arrangements of synth-driven jazz. Teflon-coated keyboard improvs and anemic percussion are the emotionally vacant core of Fontanelle's work; too fragile to embrace, too slippery to hold, and forever out of reach. Every snare hit, every note of this album is calculated, precise, and entirely soulless, like some terrifying, fusion jazz Terminator.
I'm tempted to cite "Red Light, Green Light" as a sole exception, but it's not an easy call. On one hand, the delicate keys and wobbly, wah-wah guitarwork show signs of a pulse early on; for a moment, if you close your eyes, you can almost imagine flesh-and-blood people operating the instruments. But on the other hand, it's difficult to shake the impression that it's only an illusion created through comparison with the other tracks, just as if a coma patient were compared to a corpse. In the end, not even that flattering contrast will result in anything worth recommending here.
Once again, Fontanelle prove to be long on technique and short on the emotion necessary to move their audience, and that's the real tragedy. When it comes to ability, these guys clearly have detailed files, but it's a shame to see it wasted on little more than technical exercises. Every time a new Fontanelle record comes out, I keep wondering if it'll finally be the album where they actually sound like they care about what they're playing more than how they're playing. Nope, this one, either.
