It takes time to draw a bead on the Black Drumset, who massage a droning bedroom pop that’s sometimes instrumental and sometimes not. Opening this 10-song debut, “Short Steep Curve’ sets blown-out drums to cosmic synths before a cozy patch of Yo La Tengo-worthy shaker, guitar, and organ. The brief “A Tortoiseshell Funnel’ institutes vocal harmonies and bleary polyrhythms, while “3 And A 33rd’ is a wavering, wordless exhalation. It’s this sort of humble voyaging on which the Austin band – centred around Brian Willey (ex-Ribbon Effect) and Carlos Orozco (ex-Mendoza Line, Western Keys) – has set its sights.
Willey’ drowsy vocals factor into the centrepiece trio of “The Good In The Bad Of The Good’, the Krautrock-ish “We Are Alive’, and the shoegaze-y “An Absolute Emergency’. As with the music, he’ fond of repetition and simplicity in his lyrics, and so one phrase is often mulled until it becomes part of the atmosphere. The one anomaly is the penultimate “Two Places, Different Times’, a formless stretch of rain, noise, and feedback. Willey sings again on the closing “The Whitehouse Is On Fire’, a final gesture to the intersection between sighing melody and pulsing percussion.
It’s not a bad showing, but in keeping most of the songs short and fairly direct, the Black Drumset seems to be toying almost with sketches. These musical ideas could stand to be extended, deepened, and otherwise fleshed out.
Doug Wallen
