Tim Furnish is a veteran of the Louisville, Kentucky scene, which for more than a decade now has been one of indie rock's brightest outposts. He was a founding member of Cerebellum, the band that spawned Rodan, Matmos, and Crain (of which he was also a member) and helped give rise to the local scene. And after dropping from the spotlight for a few years, and settling into the role of sideman for Louisville's various successor bands like the For Carnation and Aerial M, he's turned up again with Parlour, his first new project in years.
Consistent with its regional origins, the music of Parlour could only be referred to as 'post-rock' these days-- the term and a couple of its various definitions simply fit like a glove. Parlour play long, drawn-out, slowly developing instrumentals that rely on simple motives to carry them forth. There's not much of a sense of urgency in the music, and it seems that there wasn't in the studio either-- it took over four years for this album to be completed.
Four years is a damn long time to work on seven songs, and it's a testament to the consistency of their craft that the band sounds more or less the same from track to track, and that the mood remains cohesive. And this is all despite the fact that it was recorded at two separate locations over the course of a couple of minor personnel shifts.
The basic foundation of the Parlour sound is exceedingly simple: a basic, steady mid-tempo rhythm garnished by the occasional off-center drum fill, a creeping, repetitive bassline and some sort of clean rhythm guitar part, usually playing arpeggios. To this, textures are added with guitars and synths, building to points of high density and then receding to something more skeletal before doing it again. The sounds snake together like so many tentacles, but there aren't many suction cups in the way of, say, memorable melodies to stick to you.
As such, Octopus Off-Broadway is very much a record of the current moment. It's enjoyable to listen to, but when it's over, it's over. Nothing really stays with you when it ends. That said, as it plays, "Mperfect" is a thick wall of rhythm and texture that will effectively blanket your surroundings with sound, while the drumless "Sleeper" is a relaxing, almost new agey interlude. The synth tone that enters toward the middle to play a sort of wandering melody line is really the album's only blatant misstep, sounding as though it could have come straight from the general MIDI soundbank, but the washes of sound behind it largely compensate.
The album opens with shimmering, aquatic xylophones before the drums crash in with a fractured march, and a woozy bass spills like a cloud of ink all over everything. You can almost visualize our cephalopod friend from the cover art jet-propelling himself across the ocean floor in search of crustaceans to scoop up and turn into snacks.
The octopus' off-Broadway adventures close with several minutes of dark ambience that end "The Living Beginning," an oddly disconcerting finish to an album that, for the most part, remains steadfastly consonant. And as much as it's largely pleasant, it's also pretty ephemeral, leaving little trace of its presence when the disc stops spinning. Still, though it won't do much to win any new converts, it will undoubtedly please fans of all things post-rock.
