Tum, originally issued as a limited edition LP a few months before the release of the Impossible Shapes' 2005 album Horus, is subtle, cleanly splitting the difference between poppy folk and psychedelia. But while Tum's patchwork of thickly melodic snippets is consistently fine, its evenhandedness skews toward anonymity. Tum obscures its memorable pop melodies with psychedelic tweaks too staid to be truly freaky. The result is an album that sounds good while it's playing, but leaves little of an impression behind.
While consistently maintaining a lo-fi, Elephant 6 vibe that sits well amid the affectedly naturalistic freakfolk of today, each Impossible Shapes album has varied slightly in overarching style. Tum is characterized by a stark duality. On the lion's share of its songs, coruscating organs and gossamer guitars create deep, shifting fields of color; against this backdrop, twangy acoustic leads-- supple, vaguely Far Eastern arpeggios-- trace out brittle tangles. Rooted in this dynamic, the plosive "Pixie Pride" seems to respire, with corkscrewing electric leads punching rents in its weepy facade. The opening accordion wheeze of "Fulgent Fields" harrumphs toward a clean, bright lead; it's one of the few songs on this largely static record with significant structural variation. "Late Summer Sky", with its lysergic vocal harmonies and lapidary guitar flecks, typifies the record's brassy/murky aesthetic, and songs like "Tahuti, Splendid Scribe", with its gently ramshackle aspect, resonate with the music of the Jeweled Antler Collective. But Tum is more memorable when it bends away from this gauzy style and toward more strident tones, during moments when the idyll darkens: On "Little Gloves", maniacal strings stab at the air, then settle into a creaky, seasick lurch that gradually slows to a funerary march, organs bleating defeat.
The psychedelic touches are pleasant but tired, borrowing from Beefheart and Zappa with little revision. Backwards tape is deployed liberally: The antic "The Working Vessel" rewinds individual notes over a plunky lead and a stiff two-note bassline; the backwards drums of "Hathor" produce a sense of viscous suction; the Banhartesque, hippy-dippy cruncher "Willow Willow Yew" doubles back on itself to yowl into oblivion. We get jittery, atonal piano on "Ra in the Rising"; hard-panned vocals on the crispy garage boogie "Florida Silver Springs"; dirty bass and squealing organs on the wiggy "Hornbeam"; unreliable tempos on the rambling "Twisted Sol Epoch". What we don't get is any real sense of adventure or melodies sturdy enough to carry around. This noncommittal nature doesn't ruin Tum, but in a musical climate already teeming with slightly deranged pastoralia, it doesn't distinguish it either.
