The songs across <i>I Want to be Ready</i> are in no rush to introduce themselves. They bask in their own ambient delight until they feel ready to shout. The Philadelphia outfit unfurl across an iridescent run of five tracks, each one more grandiose than the previous. Instruments and textures retreat as quickly as they appear, creating a distinct sense of dynamism. There’s a potent sense of urgency to some of these recordings, and a twinge of unease, yet it never strays into a Swans-like delirium. The mallet-driven verve of tracks like ‘Sand Clock’ grounds the record, ensuring it never drifts so far into abstraction that it dissolves – a risk the band flirt with across various other tracks on the record. Throughout the album, the drone of the band’s Korg Minilogue is counterbalanced by traditional instrumentation. Sonically, tracks like ‘Hill Forms’ showcase a measured balance between electronic drone and acoustic ambience. Here, drummer Jake Nussbaum swaps the mallets present on the previously mentioned ‘Sand Clock’ for sticks, as the band produce their most math-rock-inspired song across the album.
‘Flossless’ is by some distance the longest track on the record. From its onset, it strikes a similar tone to the opener ‘The Laughing Earth’. Unlike the opener, however, the track is less of an electronic endeavour. It brings its guitar trills to the forefront, and they’re underpinned by that distinct Korg sound, as opposed to sitting at its periphery. ‘Flossless’ doesn’t explode so much as it ebbs away, but it reaches a boiling point that no other song on the record rivals.
The closing title track ‘I Want To Be Ready’ distils the ideas threaded throughout the record into one seven-minute listen. It’s ambient, it’s ambitious, and the electronic and acoustic aspects to the song find a delicate equipoise, coalescing into a hazy sonic landscape. This song is the most distorted on the record, yet it’s far from aggressive. The relationship between the guitar and the synths over the course of the record is one of deliberate contrasts, yet on this song they collide, their marriage providing the most gratifying flourish on the album.
I Want To Be Ready suggests that post-rock’s vitality doesn’t have to lie in rapturous explosion, but rather in the tension that precedes it – suspended in an ornate half-space that resists release without ever relinquishing intensity.
