Review Summary: Chiptune-electronica and post-rock collide in a cloud of unorganized haze, expoding into debris that, 1,000 years later, materializes into a shoegaze band called The Depreciation Guild.
The Gameboy, primarily manufactured in its original form in 1989, has since then became utterly irrelevant in mainstream culture -- even the DS and other portable gaming devices are rarely seen in use. This is because technology is modernized; now, one may play the same games on an emulator. The unappreciated devices are now used mostly as nostalgia or collecting-purposes. However, the constant bleeps and bloops of the games resonated in the hearts of the musicians in The Depreciation Guild on their self-released debut: ‘In Her Gentle Jaws.’
Enveloped in the white noise of shoegaze, adding elements of post-rock and 8-bit melodies and drum programming, this group’s experimentation is truly infallible. No band has been so successful in experimenting with sounds so well and honing a perfect originality while still making a fairly accessible pop record. Some of these songs’ melodies are repeated the perfect amount of times without causing boredom, like on the title-track when jittery electronic melodies are somehow obscured by the haze, but prevail in subconscious audibility. The following track, Grouplove-esque “Sky Ghosts” as well as “Butterfly Kisses” shows how accessible and pop-oriented The Depreciation Guild can be. At first I was unsure, but ‘In Her Gentle Jaws’ proves its worthiness well throughout. No band has truly challenged me to listen to their material so far; most bands are very easy-listens, but as the buzzes of the 90's machines float softly to your ears, inaccessibility is the first instinct. Indeed, the Guild is extremely hard to get into, but it is worth it.
The great thing about listening to this LP was the dreaminess. There was some sort of lo-fi muddle that succeeded the other sonic qualities. The Depreciation Guild’s white noise rivals that of My Bloody Valentine at times here as its confusion swallows its underlying melodies. However, this can become a little too much at times: “A Room, A Canvas” is too hazy to comprehend its tunes, and this hinders the quality of a potentially good song severely. This idea is exhibited again on “Nautilus”, where the business of it all becomes too much to process. One can tell that TDG was scrambling to make a complex and dreamy record. Their psychedelic episodes become enjoyable on “Butterfly Kisses”, when distorted guitars and feedback partially hide a video-game chiptune to make it perfectly dreamy. This group was, thus, very hit-or-miss because this was their debut -- they were just now cultivating an unstable sound that would achieve perfection at times and at others fall short of acceptance.
The musicianship in this band is rather awkward, as the main sounds are on the chiptunes and no one’s skill is as important as anyone else’s; the leader is a machine. At this point it comes down to composition: the main problem with the Guild. Catchy hooks and grooves that are well concealed by the noise fail at the coherent arrangement of it all. It is clear that there was not much effort put into the arrangement of the tracks primarily. This occurs on “Water Window”, where boredom is mainly caused by the sonic fickleness and the unsureness of whether or not anyone’s improvising or not. “Digital Solace”, a danceable song that reminds me strongly of Math The Band, displays this problem as well. At times, this makes the track much less memorable than it could be. Periods of no progression and repetitivity become rather annoying; thrown-together tracks create a mediocre album.
The vocal style of Kurt Feldman possesses a dreamy quality that hasn’t been achieved by many others. “Heavy Eyes” shows this aesthetic at its prime; he is obviously a good singer. However, the lyrical quality affects the quality of the vocals at times here. Unintelligible, repeated vocal patterns bore the auditor to said heavy eyes. They (the lyrics) aren’t exactly drenched in emotion either: “Talk, talk, it's weight on these eyes / kiss-pulse with glow / Sleep, sleep, expire where we lie / the sun will let us know.” Had they been sung by a singer who actually puts any feeling into his vocal style, they may have sounded better. Therefore, a group’s being “dream-pop” doesn’t excuse a lack of emotion or fury put into the track.
Some people like to play the Gameboy for old-time’s sake. It may bring a person back to their childhood or just make them feel the joy of playing a good game. However, what it comes down to is the fact that it ISN’T necessarily a good device -- through the haze of a retro aesthetic we see just another game. That, my shoe-gazing hipster friends, is what occurs on ‘In Her Gentle Jaws.’ 3/5
