Between 1996's groundbreaking Millions Now Living Will Never Die and 2001's pacesetting Standards, Tortoise garnered a level of influence in indie music that almost rivals that of Animal Collective today. Post-rock was one of the most active threads of 90s indie, and Tortoise not only set the bar for it, they leaped right over it. While many of their peers interpreted post-rock as "rock, but boring," they hybridized completely novel forms. Their music was informed not only by Chicago's energetic out-jazz scene, but also drum'n'bass, electro, lounge music, techno, hip-hop, dub, and modernist innovations. They released a remix record way before that was really a done thing in indie rock. They didn't single-handedly broaden the genre's horizons, but their stature could make it appear that way-- after Standards, for a minute, it seemed as if other bands were going to have to rush to catch up.
And then, Tortoise rather quietly faded from view. What happened? At some point in the first of the decade, indie rock values shifted a bit: cerebral was out, and emotions were back in fashion. As if wrong-footed by this shift, Tortoise clammed up until 2004, when they returned with the unfocused It's All Around You, and then followed with a covers album. Thus their first new album in five years, Beacons of Ancestorship, finds Tortoise in a unique position. Now that smuggling non-guitar genres into indie rock is commonplace, the record could feel like a postmortem of Tortoise's own influence, and the air of self-consciousness that often attends their music thickens.
At their best, Tortoise make academic genre-exercises sound brawny and visceral, and the first half of Beacons finds them firing on all circuits. The first six songs are pretty much straight fire, especially "Northern Something", with its icy clockwork percussion and a hyperactive bass line that throbs like a tooth ache. If it sounds a little French Touch-y, that's appropriate: Dance music has always been in Tortoise's arsenal, but it takes center stage here. Thrust and lift, pause and glide, are favored over tricky atmosphere. It's modular music, with static and rushing analog synths interpenetrating around crisp, cyclical percussion.
Genre allusions proliferate like footnotes: the double-time clap-track at the end of iridescent guitar-and-synth anthem "Prepare Your Coffin", or the brief but compelling "Penumbra", which appears to try and replicate the sound of pitch-shifted loops with live players. "Gigantes" is a wave of minimalist snips and ripples, and opener "High Class Slim Came Floatin' In" is a chin-stroking rave dissection, its movements divided by surgical slices rather than MDMA-stoking whooshes. The synths turn against the drums as precisely as fine-threaded screws, and the explosive climax feels both awesome and unearned. It demonstrates how Tortoise’s meticulous poise can sap their music's energy-- despite the overdriven synths, the track feels heavy handedly mediated, like a cut-away diagram of a song.
A curious thing happens after this vigorous opening stretch. After pivoting on the punk-rock blast of "Yinxianghechengqi", Tortoise lose enthusiasm for the about-techno aesthetic they're exploring, and gently backslide toward the alien lounge music that seems to be their lowest gear. As this happens, it bolsters the sense of stiffness on tracks like "High Class Slim". "The Fall of Seven Diamonds Plus One" is the kind of high-desert Morricone fantasy it feels like they've done a million times before, and "Monument Six One Thousand" tentatively splits the difference between dreamy-Tortoise and dancey-Tortoise. "Minors" simply recapitulates the same ideas as "Prepare Your Coffin" with less conviction. It's not that these songs are bad, any more than It's All Around You was bad-- they're just a little low-impact from a band of whom we expect a lot.
The funny thing is that for most bands, Beacons of Ancestorship would be the very definition of an ambitious record-- commanding, aiming for conceptual unity and broad scope. But this mode seems to come naturally for Tortoise, and their mastery of it accounts for the record's broad successes and slight drawbacks alike. At this point, an ambitious Tortoise record would loosen the reins a bit, perhaps even enlist an outside producer to puncture the band's hermetic seal, and let in a bit of the world. You want to see them lose some control, to sacrifice a bit of the exactitude they've honed and allow for serendipity. You want to see them at least risk fucking up, and acknowledging that music is played by humans. Now that Tortoise have inarguably mastered the consideration of their namesake, it might not hurt them to tap into a little of the impulsiveness of the hare.
