Ever since Tortoise normalized the concept of all-instrumental indie rock ensembles, we've seen and heard no lack of downward-gazing introverts who prefer to let their music do the talking. More rare, though, are artists that play instrumentals most of the time, but choose to speak up sporadically at random intervals. It's an effective tack: When used sparingly, the voice appears suddenly like a hitchhiker on a desolate stretch of road, disrupting your zoned-out state of reverie but providing an assuring reconnection to an outside world that was beginning to feel ever more distant.
It's an ethos you can trace back to Brian Eno's maiden voyage into ambient soundscaping, 1975's Another Green World, on which he limited his voice to five of the 14 tracks, as if to reinforce we humans' humble standing in the universe at large. A similar balance of presence and absence informs the new full-length by avant-pop duo the Berg Sans Nipple, whose unlikely demography-- comprised of one Parisian (Lori Sean Berg) and one Nebraskan (Shane Aspegren)-- hints at their pan-cultural, old world/new world instrumental alchemy. Though recorded in 2005, the Stateside release of Along the Quai is fortuitously timed to ingratiate an indie rock populace that's become increasingly attuned to raw, rhythmic propulsion through Animal Collective's tribal cacophony, Konono No. 1's corrosive Congotronics, and the recent reissue of Eno and David Byrne's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. That the Berg Sans Nipple vocalize just occasionally only enhances their album's disorienting, dislocating feel.
Whether they're singing or not, the Berg Sans Nipple always speak in crescendos: The songs on Along the Quai begin on a bedroom laptop and, over the course of five or six minutes, end up as powerful IMAX-sized drum-circle surges. But for all the elaborate and exotic instrumentation on display-- "Moroccan assdrum," anyone?-- the Berg Sans Nipple never overwhelm their arrangements, instead adding new layers and textures to push the songs along a linear trajectory to their inevitable climax: Digital ticks give way to gentle Wurlitzer melodies that snoop around like a curious child, guided along by glockenspiel and kalimba plinks, before graduating to foreboding trumpet lines, steel-pan pomp, and synth-freaked finales.
However, on the small handful of occasions where Aspegren steps up to the mic, you immediately understand why an album like this is being released by Conor Oberst's label. Even though Aspegren's vocals are often submerged and distorted to the point of obscurity, his plaintive, forlorn tenor comes through loud and clear; rather than define itself in opposition to the album's wordless compositions, his voice simply makes the melancholic undercurrent of the instrumentals all the more explicit. If there's a fault to Along the Quai, it's related to the fact I haven't referenced any specific songs yet: each of the eight tracks here are designed to elicit the same emotional response, evoking the common post-rock themes of hard-won triumph and hope in the face of despair. Along the Quai abounds with spirited momentum and affecting melodic swells, but as closer "Nonanate - Trois" gears up for one last thundering, percussive finish, you start to wonder who's taking the real pounding: their drums, or you, over the head.
