 |
|
Legendary Pink Dots, "Taos Hum"
This limited-edition CDR is an experiment in spontaneity, as it is the product of a five-day recording frenzy that occurred last winter.  That endeavor proves to be a mixed success, as Taos Hum offers lots of great ideas, but not much in the way of great songs.  That is about what I would expect, as the Dots' Achilles' heel has always been that their voluminous output precludes aggressive editing, a trait that can only be exacerbated by rigid time constraints.  This is still an intermittently impressive effort (the band has definitely been on a hot streak lately), but the best moments are probably too diluted or overlong to offer much appeal to more casual fans.  Which, of course, explains why this is only a CDR.
I should know by now that there is no way to predict where Edward Ka-Spel's muse will take him from album to album, but I was still taken aback by the Taos Hum's direction, as LPD's more limited and informal releases tend to be fairly abstract and improvisatory.  This one seems to be neither, as the bulk of these six pieces are coherent, structured songs with lyrics and hooks.  Also, rampant retro-industrial/goth touches make the album feel kind of like a time-capsule from the '80s or '90s (endearingly so, of course).  Such touches are most apparent on the opening "Salem," which is built upon a crunching drum machine beat and lush, minor key synthesizers.  Also, the central sequencer motif in "Divine Resignation" sounds like a close cousin to Severed Heads' "Dead Eyes Opened" (and probably a hundred other songs from that era as well).  Of course, the Dots are far too weird to offer up any such touches in a pedestrian or innocently referential manner. Taos Hum is anything but straight-forward.
Vocally and lyrically, Ka-Spel is in fairly fine form throughout the album, delivering his cryptic words with characteristically simmering intensity.  The songs that work best, unsurprisingly, tend to be the ones with strong hooks, such as the aforementioned "Divine Resignation," but some of the albums' "hooks" can be quite unconventional.  For example, "Ash and Sand" sounds like someone lazily and sloppily playing a banjo over a strangled, ghostly whine, while "The Piper" sounds like it was kitschily (and ingeniously) constructed from one of the preset rhythms on a cheap Casio keyboard.  Naturally, Ka-Spel and company can also sound quite compelling when they plunge into a nightmarishly abstract rabbit hole.  Unfortunately, they often decide to go in both directions within the same song, which is where things get quite dicey.
In fact, almost none of these songs are quite presented in their ideal format and both the album and the individual songs feel uneven and schizophrenic.  This makes Taos Hum feel like a prolonged cavalcade of exasperating misfires.  "The Piper" is probably the best single illustration of the problem, as it starts off as a very catchy and propulsive song that shows hints of fraying at the edges, but then dissolves into fractured free-form abstraction that seems to go on forever.  None of the other songs are quite sabotaged to that extreme, but they all have a maddening tendency to feel about twice as long as they need to be.  Also, the album's longest piece (the closing "Premonition 40") seems like complete filler, sounding like little more than a series of dissonant synth vignettes surrounded by dull dark ambiance.
Despite all of my grievances, I have a nagging suspicion that someone completely new to Legendary Pink Dots would find a lot to like on Taos Hum, as it is brimming with cool ideas and sounds as uniquely surreal and shadowy as anything else in the LPD catalog.  Unfortunately, after having heard so many other Dots' album, I cannot help but expect more from them than this.  That said, the Taos Hum sessions were still kind of a creative success, as the intense, compacted recording session demonstrably inspired a number of very promising, vibrant ideas.  I just wish the band had given themselves enough time afterward to sift through them all and get it right for the actual album.
Samples:
 
 
 
