Alright… this was mentioned in an earlier post, but new instrumental band on Hello Sir released their 30 minute debut last month! Hurray! It’s a duo consisting of guitar player Adam Joyce and drummer/keyboardist Brennan O’Brien, and judging from youtube, they look pretty cool live.. with or without the local drunken douchebag crowd. Being a duo, the sound could of course lack something, but TBC uses their setup to the optimal effect, special features being multitudes of lightly strummed, layered guitars, intoxicating shifts in volume and loads of reverb.. all done very coherently. You could easily draw a parallel to the initial two-man outfit of Russian Circles, that managed to bring about some of the hardest-hitting, super-focused, technical post-rock I’ve ever heard. TBC is much less metallic and mathy, though, but they manage just as well as Russian Circles to create a sound that reveals some impressive results when played at adequate volumes. This is both due to skilled, clear production and even more so, the intelligent structure of layers and the sonic spaces they each operate in.

The tracks on I’m The Spring are all quite post-rockish in the traditional sense: Instrumental, guitar, outbursts, buildups, slow-downs. But nowadays when these old methods don’t really work, and I find myself yawning at Mogwai, it’s quite a relief to see them used in a new setting, with shorter tracks and thus more compact excitement. On a few occasions TBC do slow down quite a lot, but it certainly doesn’t ruin the album and seems more of a natural break in the flow of the album than a cheap sentimental trick. Check out the opening track of the album below.. some of the best stuff I’ve heard this year…

Underpass Sunrise:

The Bronzed Chorus - I'm The Spring
Hello Sir, April 2009

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