Review Summary: It can be compared to this or that, true, but it doesn't fair well when placed next to Copia.
Eluvium’s
Copia was an album that banked it all on--let’s just be honest here--naked piano compositions and string arrangements, that, while seemingly easy to identify by ear and write to tab paper, worked cogently in their honest simplicities and unpretentious ambitions. Arriving in 2007, the album found its way into the hearts and minds of many, and, what was first hinted at in the good but unremarkable products on previous journeys
Talk Amongst the Trees and
When I Live By the Garden and the Sea, gave evidence that Matthew Cooper had finally started to fully realize his vision as a composer. As such, the record picked up a fair amount of accolades and awards from various publications, subsequently gaining Cooper notoriety for his authorship of a sleeper hit for that year. Three years later and the composer has returned with ambition to garner the same type of success, but this time around, however, he’s decided to deviate from his winning formula to something that turns out to be a little questionable.
2010’s
Similes plays to its own name in offering us a collection of ideas that can suitably be fitted into many ‘like’ or ‘as’ comparisons when placed next to the work of other artists. The key sound constituents of Matthew Cooper’s
Copia are still here--piano, brass, and strings--but these ingredients are mixed a little bit differently this time out with a heavy touch of ambiance to fill in the sonic picture.
Similies also makes use of the composer’s sleepy, Matt Berninger-styled vocals for a select number of the tracks that work to give the album more of a song-oriented feel, as opposed to the more sweeping, growing movements of past albums. Songs like “The Motion Makes Me Last” and the awe-inspiring “Making Up Minds” benefit from the new inclusion--each of their melodies happen to stand out as
Similies’ most memorable and joyous moments. However, on tracks like brood-to-nothing “Weird Creatures” and the over-extended, ambient fizzle of “Cease To Know”, the vocal inclusion feels gimmicky and ill-fitted, as if the composer built up his compositions months prior to actually putting down his voice tracks.
Matthew Cooper’s mix of melody and instrumental musings bring to mind the problems with the recent
A Chorus Of Story Tellers from The Album Leaf. On one hand, the added vocal inclusions are a pleasing deviation from the standard norm of instrumental landscapes that we would typically expect from Matthew Cooper, but on the other, however,
Similies suffers from an album path that’s filled with anticline-to-syncline performances; the aforementioned “The Motion Makes Me Last” and “Making Up Minds” are responsible for nearly all of the album’s memorable moments, and nearly everything that falls between these songs take on the guise of less-than-dexterous segues and interludes just doing their part to draw out
Similies length, when they should be working to better the album as a whole. Another issue with
Similes that is sure to depress fans is that the elegant piano chords of tracks like “Piano Ballet” and “Nepenthe” from Cooper’s past creations really have no similar counterpart on new album
Similes. If anything, it seems that Cooper has alienated fans of past efforts with this album, and, at the same time, his new change in direction is not really strong enough to firmly distinguish itself from the works of his sonic neighbors, such as The Album Leaf's more recent offerings or Thee Silver Mt. Zion's first few albums.
Ultimately, it could be said that
Similes is an album that is kind of like
this or kind of like
that; to be honest, second track “The Motion Makes Me Last” couldn’t have said it any better: ‘
I’m a vessel between two places that I’ve never been.’ While on a collision course for more critical acclaim and success that was first started on 2007’s
Copia, the Portland resident has apparently deviated into a new course that, while showing promise for the future, can’t seem to push through far enough or make just the right turns to distinguish itself and accomplish its goals as an album. Matthew is welcome to draw comparisons to other artists in his own time, but I think I speak for the majority of listeners when I say we will probably want a more concrete, secure product that has some sort of vision in mind next time around. When you have an ambiguous, unresolved identity like Eluvium’s
Similes, you have an album that can easily amount to be no more than the definition of the album in question: it’s just a comparison tool--no more, no less.
