Tortoise are a rare epoch-defining band whose innovations were born not out of ambition, but more from the fact that they were all good friends who loved wildly different forms of music and saw no contradiction in doing so. It was their openness to trying different things and synthesizing different sonic elements that helped make their sound so unique, but the community-forward spirit of the band – a product of their city of Chicago, where musicians are always working together and leaving their hang-ups about genre distinctions at the door – was what made it all feel so natural.
Today, not only is the band now split between Chicago, Portland and L.A., but their creative lives outside of the band continue to evolve and expand apart from one another. The band’s release schedule has become more and more sporadic over the years, and their latest album Touch is their first in almost a decade. The growing distance of time and space unfortunately seems to have had an effect on the album, which, while not without its bright spots, is disjointed and lacks the group chemistry that’s kept their best work so resonant over the years.
It’s a struggle to identify exactly what it is that Touch does wrong. It’s not like the band took a big swing at something outside of their wheelhouse and missed, nor are they simply regurgitating everything that worked so well for them in the past (though tracks like ‘A Title Comes’ do feel a little like they’re operating on autopilot). Something’s just missing here, and the first issue might be the production. Their classic albums are marked by a sense of warmth and color in all of their twists and turns, and Touch just feels like a wash of grey in comparison.
It’s not like the band is incapable of engaging with darker sounds – after all, one of its members was once in the band My Dad is Dead. The highlight of the album, ‘Rated OG’ is driven by a dry-and-heavy drum sound and restless sense of claustrophobic tension that feels like a positive step towards something in that realm. But Touch never seems to see these steps to fruition. The album opener ‘Vexations’ moves with a sense of swagger that feels intriguing, but the crunchy tone of the guitar clashes with the track’s synthesized groove in the outro. On tracks such as ‘Promenade à Deux’, it feels like they’re going for Fripp/Eno surrealism, but the overly antiseptic production reduces it to just mush.
The album is not without its highlights. ‘Layered Presence’ embodies the wide-eyed creativity that the group has made their trademark, with some delightful harpsichord-esque synth presets, and ‘Axial Seamount’ grooves with a NEU!-esque sense of stoicism that is hard to deny. But even at its heights, Touch is always undermined by clashing musical elements, bland production and a general sense of awkwardness.
