Review Summary: This Will Bore You.
Although I can easily acknowledge that they are nothing unique, I’d like to think of myself as a sizeable This Will Destroy You fan, as I consider their self-titled full-length and their
Young Mountain EP to be among some of my favourite albums. Therefore, you can probably understand my disappointment when I found out that the band is completely switching gears for their upcoming sophomore release by changing their sound considerably;
Moving On The Edges Of Things is a two-track single that shows what people can expect from their full-length later this year, and quite frankly, any previous fans of the band are bound to be let down.
Anyone familiar with This Will Destroy You knows that the band previously played post-rock with a lot of electronic and ambient elements thrown into the mix.
Moving On The Edges Of Things, however, shows the band completely stripping their sound down to just pure ambiance: gone are the melodic guitar leads and the pounding drums and soft swells into crashing climaxes, and in its place is…well, nothing. “Rituals” features soft guitar swells and static for three-and-a-half minutes before quiet drums uneventfully usher in more layers of guitar swells and static. Four minutes later, the drums get more aggressive over the noise before another minute of ambient noise rounds out the nine minute track. “Woven Tears”, the second track of the single, is a little more interesting, but not by much. Drums are present through-out, and there’s a colder, mechanical feel, but it’s still just mostly comprised of swells and electronic hums. And, really, that’s about as exciting as it gets.
Quite frankly, listening to
Moving On The Edges Of Things is like sitting down at your kitchen table only to have a plate filled with ketchup and mustard set in front of you: it just leaves you just feeling helplessly baffled and wondering when the real food is going to come. While I can see the qualities in listening to ambient music (the textures, the timbre, the atmospheric qualities, the mood), it’s just feels incredibly underwhelming coming from a band that has done so much more interesting things in the past. While I will give these songs credit, because they aren’t really bad or poorly composed, I just feel that this band could be doing so much more. This might spark some intrigue for those with a proclivity towards ambient music, but for fans of the band, I guess it’s time to come to terms with the fact that the band we know is completely dead.
