Since the mid-1990s, Toronto's Do Make Say Think have been funneling the rhythmic and improvisational sensibility of jazz into pastoral post-rock. Unlike their early work, with its abrasive tangents, their fifth album is fairly seamless-- it gives more and demands less from the listener, and marks DMST as a band more invested in confidently honing and perfecting their idiom than in pushing their own boundaries.
Unlike Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the group's most obvious analogue, DMST prefers continually shifting emphases to nail-biting crescendos. They record in barns and cabins, capitalizing upon these sites' natural sonic spaciousness and nostalgic atmosphere. It's doubtful that they could even make this kind of music in a professional studio, based as it appears to be on spontaneity and casual camaraderie; you can tell that being somewhere rustic and remote is crucial to their process.
But DMST aren't content with handing you a decaying artifact; they also want to impress a sense of the hands that made it, and You, You're a History in Rust is packed with evidence: Tape hiss, accidental guitar notes, casual laughter, and digressive interludes repeatedly pull us out of the music's concrete fantasy and into an awareness of its provisional nature.
It's probably a mistake to discuss Rust in the context of individual tracks, since DMST make albums first and foremost. But in certain tracks, you can hear musical decisions that do nothing to enhance the song at hand, yet remain essential to maintaining Rust's delicate suspension. Take "A With Living": Flickering guitar trails and textural strums gradually evolve into a fairly straightforward indie rock drifter with bleary vocal harmonies that-- as is sometimes the case with DMST's like-minded contemporaries Thee Silver Mt. Zion-- don't detract from the music. A lot of bands would've stopped after the elegiac finale, but DMST like to expand and connect, and they extend the song for several more seemingly inconsequential minutes. Just seemingly, though: When the opening chords of "The Universe!" blare out, it becomes clear that this gauzy conclusion serves to accentuate the oncoming riptide.
Despite all the haunting vibes, woodwinds, and honeyed strings, rock music's guitar/bass/drums dynamic is dominant on Rust; it hovers between the rambunctious clatter of Broken Social Scene (which shares two members with DMST) and the elegant contortions of Jaga Jazzist. The individual tracks divide neatly between two overarching moods: pensive and emphatic. And naturally, the most memorable tracks fall into the latter category. "The Universe!" isn't kidding about its exclamation mark; it's a flag-waving post-rock anthem that lays waste for its entire five-minute run. Big-bang guitars crash and echo stridently over dynamited drums as a massive bassline stretches out and snaps back like an elastic band. "Executioner Blues" is nearly as stately, with giant reverbed chords rounding off into feedback and creeping guitars squalling out over plinking pianos; the guitars here emote more convincingly than the vocals on other tracks.
At their best, the album's more pensive movements don't meander. Instead, they lightly prod at a central theme, then cautiously retreat. "A Tender History in Rust" is one example, with its chattering accumulation of ambient effects, sped-up vocal loops, and flocks of tones that bend and slide away, but opener "Bound to Be That Way" really epitomizes this tentative approach. Skimming percussion blurs into hesitant pianos before fading off into the left channel and opening a space for gentle woodwinds and plodding guitars, creating a surface of faint ripples and swells. Eventually a bright acoustic figure and crisp drum rolls push through, and finally, a laddering guitar melody snaps in like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle. It's these moments of sharp coherence that justify the expanses of uncertainty on Rust.
