Birds Robe
Existing roughly midway between the thrilling expansiveness of tour mates 65daysofstatic and the finely tuned sludgy drone of Sunn O))), Perth’s Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving are one of the country’s most ambitious post-rock outfits and their seemingly endless well of ideas shows no signs of running dry on Yield To Despair.
At their best, there’s a sense their music may collapse into a shuddering heap, a quality they share with Dirty Three. Shaking Off Futility works this territory, with a vaguely menacing drone slowly pushing through the chaos to assert itself as the backbone of the song. The real epic moments come on Downbeat, which morphs from deliberate, isolated drums into a kind of adrenaline-fuelled meltdown, with screeching noise competing for space with the kind of furious drumming that could take a mere mortal’s arm off. The mood is predominantly ominous and grimly evocative, but there are moments of beautiful spaciousness, like in The Albanian Sleepover – Part One, where an intense, grinding rhythm builds to a machine-like density before stripping back layers to reveal a more becalmed oasis within.
Yield To Despair is an evocative affair, a forceful demonstration of ambition and scope.
★★★★
DANIEL HERBORN
