The words "Crane Wars" conjure images of urban destruction for me. The cover art for the Beans' second album features a photograph of a dilapidated high-rise. It's unclear whether the frame is being built up, torn down, or refurbished. The back cover contrasts two photographs: one of a diesel-powered truck in a hazardous waste zone; the other of a verdant rainforest. As I open the jewel case, I'm expecting an album of violent extremes, a force that uses its constructive tools to demolish itself. But, silkscreened on the compact disc, the image of a cartoonish bird crane appears, head down. And that figure serves better as a metaphor for my disappointment with this record.
Beans are a five-piece group from Vancouver, British Columbia. They approach music improvisationally, rarely playing a song the same way twice. Local musicians add color to the compositions, bringing their own array of instruments. So it bothers me that, from such a range of possibilities, they've sequenced their three least original pieces first. "Windows y Tower" kicks things off with horn blasts at irregular intervals. If this is found sound, it's more "high school band tuning time' than "The National Anthem." There's silence, then minimal guitar and bassline interplay, followed finally by some pretty intense drumming. But the lead guitarist has this annoying habit of trilling out series of notes, and the band doesn't back him up by giving this song the climax it deserves. Instead, a violin tries its best to climb to A Silver Mt. Zion, and just ends up as haze hovering below. It all ends somewhere near the 12-minute mark.
"Slow Recovery" builds similarly. Mournful guitars elicit comparisons to that other gloomy Canadian collective, until, I kid you not, someone decides to fade in three minutes of Aphex Twin's "Metal Grating" from Selected Ambient Works Volume II. Beans' use of samples works when employed with more subtlety, though, from drops of rain to occasional Nintendo beeps and cupboard creaks. Other times, it just sounds like they've left the television on, or let a burglar fumble about their living room while the cat walks across the piano. "Boston RWA" begins with a nasty chainsaw sound, evoking the industrial fetishism they've been hinting at. Unfortunately, after minutes of aimless guitar meandering, and even a nice, thick bassline which meshes with some progressive drumming, the band plasters on a trumpet chorus from Cerberus Shoal for a pleasing but highly derivative tempo change. This could have been a great song without the intrusion of the album's first lyrics, but the lead singer finds the worst possible vocal affection to deliver the already weak line, "I think I'll stop loving you."
Why the curious, eerie pieces were hidden as the last few tracks is beyond me. "I Breathe the Air (From Other Planets)" wafts up on the breaths of sampled operatic voices, and suddenly, discordant piano accents dance with drums, like a creepy carnival parade heard from a block away. The contemplative guitar chords and tinny drums of "Vent du Nord" make it the most simple work on the album, and it calms like the best of Yo La Tengo's later records. Finally, "Hollow Stars" is a tapestry of sounds as heard by an infant trying to make sense of its tenement building: female vocals coo, synths shift ground slowly, and a drum machine and live percussionist weave together soft jungle rhythms to create a beautiful lullaby.
I mentioned earlier that Crane Wars disappointed me. It's not a bad album, but the band's sound doesn't seem its own, and the production isn't hi-fi enough to flesh their sound out. Much of the time they utilize toy-machine crane-arm tactics, piecing together whatever the clumsy claw picks up. The fact that one bandmember, Tygh Runyan, periodically leaves to act in films like Antitrust no doubt adds to the disjointedness. Beans don't come across as star side projects like Dogstar, though. While it's great that rock bands are decentralizing their structure and exploring diverse styles of playing as if it were natural, few people are interested in weak jam-band collages. Albums like this frustrate me, because with more concentration Beans could become a wrecking ball that demolishes all in its path.
