Hit the right couple of notes and you could convey even the most complex of feelings. Our ears are hyper-attuned to nuance, whether we notice it or not, and certain sounds can telegraph an avalanche of emotion. Enlisting this shorthand sometimes encourages laziness in musicians, but nobody minds when the results work. For example, "The Birds", the lead track from Telefon Tel Aviv's third album Immolate Yourself, isn't much on paper-- some sequenced synths, an insistent snare, some ghostly, hard to make out vocals-- but its six or so minutes set the stage so nicely for greater things to come it doesn't matter that there's not much there.
The fact that the rest of the disc only occasionally delivers on that promise shouldn't be held too strongly against its achievements. Immolate is arranged and produced with almost microscopic attention to detail by the Chicago team of Joshua Eustis and Charles Cooper, who was tragically found dead the week of this album's release, and the emotions it evokes are undeniably effective-- and musically similar to Junior Boys or M83, sentimental groups that specialize in electronic music imbued with a certain elusive pop glow. Indeed, one of the pleasures and frustrations of Immolate is how subtly it similarly exploits the nearly invisible barrier separating song from simple synth sketch.
Yet unlike the more cohesive albums from those aforementioned acts, Immolate is a one-step forward, one-step back proposition, marching in place to an internal setting somewhere between chilly background mood and something more melodic and engaging. It's impeccably crafted but oddly non-committal, pulling you in and out like a dream. Part of the problem stems from the practical matter of sequencing-- not in programming terms but simply how the album progresses. Following "The Birds", "Your Mouth" pulls off nearly the same sleight-of-hand trick, implying more substance than what's actually there, priming you for something bigger to happen but ultimately leaving you hanging.
The payoff arrives with the next track, "M", which after its slow swoosh of a start develops into an honest-to-goodness song, with vocals, a hypnotic hint of a melody, and herky-jerk drums equally informed by the clubs and contemporary top 40. It's not a Technicolor Wizard of Oz moment, but the effect is largely the same. Something's different, something clicks, or at least clicks and connects in a better way than what came before, even more so on "Helen of Troy", which sounds like a great lost Depeche Mode single-- there's even an actual chorus! With the subdued but still solid "Mostly Translucent", it again sounds like Telefon Tel Aviv found their inner Martin Gore, and the super "Stay Away From Being Maybe" finds the group heeding that advice, the listening experience shifting to a more enthusiastic "definitely."
Then, disappointingly, Telefon Tel Aviv retreat back to mood piece on the pretty but ephemeral "Made a Tree on the World", which once again relies too much on a few well-placed chords and the easy sentiments they suggest. "Your Every Idol" doesn't justify its five minutes of echoing drums, droning synths, and disembodied voices and the record closes with the relatively perfunctory title track and like riding a Mobius strip, we feel back at the beginning again. For all the pleasant stops along the way, the album hasn't come full-circle so much as spun its wheels in place.
