Oceans - Nothing Collapses

Oceans
Noth­ing Col­lapses
Cop­per Lung; 2009

Here’s my musi­cal admis­sion of the month – I’m not cer­tain that I will ever “get” instru­men­tal post-​rock. I can appre­ci­ate the tech­ni­cal pre­ci­sion that such bands evince, mostly because, to per­form this style of music well, bands actu­ally have to know how to play their instru­ments, much less seem­ingly have a back­ground in for­mal composition.

Fur­ther­more, we live in a world where Explo­sions In The Sky com­poses the sound­track for a pop­u­lar movie and Sigur Ros can be found along­side Dave Matthews Band in some hip parental CD player. As such, I would claim that much of the world is uncon­sciously famil­iar with the ele­ments of the sound: chim­ing, keen­ing gui­tars (usu­ally two or three of them) ring out with an orches­tral grace; string sec­tions, both real and syn­the­sized, often join the fray to add an ethe­real, oth­er­worldly sound; and drum­ming, in both syn­co­pated and straight-​forward for­mats, drive the music onto crescendo after boom­ing crescendo. When you fac­tor in that many of these acts revel in writ­ing songs that are reg­u­larly over six min­utes in length, post-​rock effec­tively brings key aspects of old-​school clas­si­cal music back to the fore­front of pop music.

Thus, while I do not want to bur­den Oceans with being the focal point for this bit of decon­struc­tion, I find that I’m unable to resist. It’s mostly because the band’s debut record, Noth­ing Col­lapses, is such a pris­tine, pitch-​perfect exam­ple of the genre that is post-​rock. The album resounds with gor­geous arrange­ments: one set of gui­tar work serv­ing as the “voice” while another gui­tar serves as the melodic under­pin­ning, whether through crunch­ing power chords or a coun­ter­point line, all while a vio­lin weaves its way in and out of the gui­tars’ interplay.

What I enjoy most about this band’s take on post-​rock is how they resist the urge to turn each track and/​or turn of the cho­rus into a chain of ever-​growing humon­gous crescen­dos of sound. There is a del­i­cate respect for restraint at play here that is quite attrac­tive, one that should be mod­eled by lesser acts. More­over, while most rock musi­cians might abhor such a word, this record is insanely pretty, but like everyone’s favorite girl-​next-​door from high school and/​or col­lege, this beauty comes from the band not really being aware of how pretty its music really is.

And maybe that’s just my issue with Oceans and post-​rock in gen­eral. Yes, these songs are lovely (“Boy Detec­tive,” Traps And Traps,” and “Your Plane Leaves Tomor­row” are shin­ing exem­plars) and this band is as cohe­sive as the best orches­tras. Nev­er­the­less, for all of the praise I can foist upon this band for ris­ing above other hack­neyed, we-don’t-want-to-sing-or-write-lyrics instru­men­tal bands, there are times when all of these songs sound too much alike. With­out a famil­iar, eas­ily rec­og­niz­able melodic hook, post-​rock music can often become merely epic-​sounding back­ground music (or the afore­men­tioned movie sound­track) – not every­one can write Takk, much less the 5^th Sym­phony.

I really enjoyed Noth­ing Col­lapses, and I hope that Oceans can con­tinue mak­ing such out­stand­ing music, includ­ing a sub­se­quent rise in noto­ri­ety and respect from the band’s post-​rock peers. But me – I think just pre­fer hav­ing lyrics and vocals in my rock music. The human voice can carry and deliver an emo­tional weight that a gui­tar line can­not, no mat­ter how amaz­ing it might be.