THIS WILL DESTROY YOU (BY) THIS WILL DESTROY YOU

Post-Rock / Ambient
2008, Magic Bullet Records
MySpace / Last.fm

More than any other form of entertainment, I think
relationships with music are a lot like relationships with people. Chances are, I'm going to listen to an album I like dozens of times in a year, and there's really nothing else that I interact with to that extent. I might watch my favorite movies once or twice a year, at most.  My favorite books?  A few times in my life.  As with people, I'm surrounded by music constantly, and as with people, that relationship is often complicated and unpredictable. Sometimes you meet someone that throws you off at first, even if you can't pinpoint why.  Maybe something about them doesn't quite click with you.  Maybe they bore you.  Sometimes those people end up being the closest to you, as much as you wouldn't have thought it.  Or maybe the opposite — sometimes the most interesting-seeming people turn out to be pretty superficial after getting to know them.  It's the same with some albums.  It's the reason music means so much to people — it is entirely possible, and only slightly weird, to have a relationship with an album that changes and grows over time.  (And while you can't hug or cuddle an album, you can stare lovingly at their album covers in your candle-lit room at night. Not that I've done that.) 

I really liked This Will Destroy You's first album, Young Mountain, when it came out.  A lot of people accused them of being an Explosions In The Sky rip-off, but I thought Young Mountain was better than anything Explosions had ever put out — less cloying, more dynamic and structured.  Then, in early 2008, they released their self-titled, and those comparisons died a quiet death.  Sadly, so did my interest.  Despite the tongue-in-cheek goofiness of the album cover, their self-titled saw the band dropping most of the song-structured prettiness, moving away from obvious emotional hooks toward expansive ambient soundscapes.  Songs still follow a typical post-rock formula, but at an unhurried, linear pace, shrugging off melody in place of texture.  All at once, TWDY stopped writing songs that sounded catered to triumphant movie trailers — this album feels like the soundtrack to some actionless, indie Western.  It's patient, layered and purposeful, rather than a collection of pretty-sounding tunes.  I wasn't very interested in that, two years ago.  Post-rock often ignores easy hooks, but this was ambient even at its heaviest.  It demonstrated an interesting new direction for the band, but it just didn't hold my attention.

Still, since I didn't dislike the album, I kept it around.  About a year ago I started throwing it on every now and then when I needed something droney, something that wouldn't distract me.  And I realized something odd.  Even though the music didn't quite hold my attention, I still enjoyed it.  A lot.  Now, I had other albums I kept around as background music.  Music that's just kind of there, and nice enough that I don't mind it being there.  But TWDY's self-titled was different, somehow.  It was engaging, so long as I didn't focus on it too much.  This album is a musical Magic Eye — I could see the big picture (a sailboat) only when I let my brain go a bit fuzzy, when I absorbed the album without staring directly at it.  And I enjoyed the big picture immensely.  All it once it clicked how much this album is right up my alley, with its melancholy warmth and its open, Westerny sense of space. So I kept putting it on whenever I didn't mind zoning out, and it turned out that was pretty often.  It put me in an almost meditative mood, and despite the fact that I rarely gave the album my full attention, soon enough I was addicted to it.  For an album with few hooks or obvious emotions, I've come to crave the experience of listening to these seven songs, the way they run around you rather than through you, blinking into your attention before dissolving into haze.

Ultimately, the difference between this and other patient, slow-paced post-rock might be little more than tone — which is really what defines post-rock to begin with.  Most instrumental bands fall on bright melodies if they want to inspire, or cold, moody guitar-work if they want to depress — obviously.  It's easy enough to make that work when your sound is structured around tone.  On their self-titled, TWDY doesn't go for those easy emotions.  Their tone is almost neutral, evocative without being cluttered or cloying.  The guitarwork is felt more than heard.  It's as if the music has been stripped of its top layer, the melody that other bands might structure songs around, leaving just the droning, reverby undertow.  More and more, bands like Explosions In The Sky and Mono sound like meandering strings of pretty melodies to me — but here, every moment of the album is part of the greater whole, building toward a tone and atmosphere that sneaks a vast panorama right in under your nose.  It's what makes the music hard to pin down initially, while giving it such deep, resonating impact — this album is beautiful, it is emotional, but it wants to steer you toward these realizations, rather than dowsing you in them immediately. There is a sense of direction, a linear narrative that tugs you forward like the pull of a river, and the songwriting is often deceptively straightforward. You could call it simplicity, I guess.  But for as simple as it is, I've found that very few albums are paced with such confidence.  There are few flourishes, few stylistic surprises — some glitch-style electronica overlays the guitar melodies here and there, and somehow conveys the mesmerizing, crackling warmth of a campfire instead than the cold industrial vibe you'd expect.  Nothing is a distraction here, much less superfluous.

This Will Destroy You paints a clear picture of an abstract feeling, and I just couldn't see it at first.  Few bands can pull that off.  Since I've already established my pretentiousness by comparing music to landscapes, I'm going all out here — this is what makes music stick around for me, not catchy Top 40 hooks.  Sure, you'll enjoy those earworms in 10 years out of nostalgia, but complexity allows a relationship to actually grow.  Lots of artists can paint a clear picture of a simple feeling, and that's important too.  But simplicity generally doesn't build long-lasting relationships.  More often, you find acquired tastes are the ones that stick around.