As one half of the Postal Service, Jimmy Tamborello pulled off the improbable trick of getting Death Cab for Cutie fans to forget, momentarily, about guitars. Sure, Ben Gibbard played a few hooky leads and created a lyrical world where extravagant romance trumped rhetorical coherence at every turn. But indie kids could emotionally connect with Tamborello's chiseled melodic muscle, too. The burbling glitchcore he honed as Dntel-- where elegant polyrhythmic waves whooshed out into broad, open intervals-- found a wide audience that liked the idea of electronic music but was either aesthetically or ideologically repelled by what they perceived as its frigidness. This audience, like Tamborello himself, had little personal investment in electronic music's intricate matrix of stylistic variations, but heard in the Postal Service's overstated electro a recognizable emotional catharsis that squared with indie rock's definition of same.
On his new solo album, it's no accident that Tamborello uses his moniker from his electro-pop band Figurine-- it's emphatically not a Dntel record. This also alludes to its origins: While touring Germany with Figurine several years ago, Tamborello discovered minimalism by way of some Kompakt records, and decided to take a stab at it himself. The result of that learning experience is Mistake Mistake Mistake Mistake, an album of tepid and stylistically muddled techno. It's not as if he's forgotten his bread and butter: "55566688833", the album's first and most memorable track, reworks the Postal Service's springy opulence with Tamborello's own relaxed murmur replacing Gibbard's theatrics. It comes off like Casiotone for the Painfully Alone-- droll and charming. "Leftovers" coasts on that good idea's fumes, working a wriggly, difference-splitting groove that's too hyper to lull and too rigid to swoon.
From this point onward, lucidity disintegrates at a rapid clip, as Tamborello attempts to craft historically informed techno while recoiling from its unforgiving nudity, dressing it up in a variety of garish, mismatched costumes. He meanders through an array of house music offshoots, but seems primarily interested in the clicky, cut-n-paste concision of microhouse. Nuanced stasis proves a stretch for Tamborello's maximalist sensibility, and most of the tracks sound exactly like what they are: An apprentice's overwrought take on the stark, sublime depths of Isolée and Luomo, overloaded with guest vocals and concessions to hyperbole.
"Ruining the Sundays" heavy-hands bleating bass shapes and clip-art generic stuttering synths (which reappear on "Apologies") through interminable permutations. "Pretend It's a Race and I'm on Your Side" sounds like a hammy Dominic Eulberg outtake that keeps puttering long after its baroque whorls have exhausted their interest. "You Again" misplaces an inconsequential Jenny Lewis guest vocal amid a cartoonishly over-articulated squelch, while on "All the Way to China", Erlend Øye holds court amid a fluttering synth burner that frustratingly refuses to surge or settle, treading stagnant water. Despite these missteps, Tamborello is a sympathetic character-- forced to choose between continuing his intuitive exploration of digital tech or attempting to learn his gear's history under public scrutiny, he took the more courageous route. Nevertheless, the resultant album finds the talented producer cutting himself off at the knees, playing against every one of his strengths.
