Review Summary: welcome to good burger home of the good burger can i take your telecaster
Tiny Moving Parts emerged in the midwest emo community as an invigorating and optimistic alternative to the other prominent groups in the scene, characterized by erratic structural shifts, jagged and rapid-fire drumming, and most notably the blazingly tapped melodies and impassioned shouts of Dylan Mattheisen. At their creative apex, albums like
Pleasant Living and
Celebrate captivated listeners with unpredictable arrangements and surprisingly sophisticated emotional depth. On
Tiny Moving Parts, the husk of what made these records so compelling still remains, but the feelings have become increasingly shallow, and the free-flowing song structures the band is known for have morphed into a formulaic prison. The bones of a great record are present here, but the lack of drive to progress creatively continues to shoot the band’s aspirations in the foot.
Tiny Moving Parts have been a stagnant creative entity for a handful of years now, so the idea of the Minnesotan trio changing anything about their routine was cause for excitement and anticipation. Entirely self-produced and self-released,
Tiny Moving Parts can also be classified as entirely self-referential, because it’s genuinely stunning how often the band rehashes old ground here, to the point of often blatantly plagiarizing old songs (see 1:34 of “Demons Are Taking Over”, in which the band lapses into a riff that sounds identical to 2016’s “Headache”.) Everything about this album’s production and rollout was within the band’s control, and absolutely nothing new was accomplished or even attempted; just like every album since the far superior
Celebrate,
Tiny Moving Parts is precisely 10 tracks long, with each of these tracks occupying the same general BPM, emotional territory, and instrumental trajectory. This complaint should not be conflated with me calling the album an unpleasant listen, but it’s so apparent just how much the group is leaving on the table here. Mattheisen possesses an otherworldly amount of talent on his instrument, and is clearly capable of writing sugary hooks and emotionally gripping melodies. Why he continues to rely on the same aggressively fast tapping pattern in every single song is beyond me. This strict adherence to formula indicates either an inability to think outside of the box, or perhaps more concerningly, a fear of progressing into uncharted waters.
On “Jotting Notes”, Mattheisen asks the pitiable question “Why should I have to struggle at all?”, and it’s clear from listening to
Tiny Moving Parts that the band has no interest in doing so for their art. Nothing about
Tiny Moving Parts is terrible or unforgivable, but nothing about it is great or memorable either. Dylan shouts, Bill plays his fast linear fills, the guitars go bleep bloop, the song ends. It’s objectively great to see the band having fun playing music and taking their creative property into their own hands, but it’s simultaneously disappointing to have waited 3 years for a record that is indistinguishable from their last release.
