Trying to keep track of Canadian experimental guitarist and composer Aidan Baker’s recorded output since his first release in 2000 is an almost impossible challenge. The Discogs bible lists around 170 albums under his name and that’s not including the stuff he’s created as part of bands like Arc and Nadja. Baker has become a centrifugal force in the underground noise scene in his now home city Berlin and his influence stretches out further into the alt-metal stratosphere. Last seen on Backseat Mafia as a key component in the deep zoned space-rock collective Hypnodrone Ensemble ( See Review ) , he now returns as part of a relatively new project, the slow core trio Tavare and an album ‘Too Small To Be So High’.
Joined by drummer Angela Muñoz, who’s also part of the stunning Hypnodrone, and bassist Tristen Bakker, the trio presented an introduction to their gently probing song forms last year with Ghosts. The ‘Too Small To Be So High’ collection further explores this lean towards vocal expression and more orthodox structure but with the intention of testing the expansiveness of the voice and harmony, verse and chorus with resolute and tender care. Taglines for Tavare music tend towards combinations of dirge, dream, sludge, pop and gaze but essentially Baker, Bakker and Muñoz are doing more than playing with form. ‘Too Small To Be So High’ delivers a series of emotional stories in the most open and sincere way, songs presented live and in the moment.
Recorded in the Genezarethkirche, Berlin during the hours before the band played a live show in the same space, it’s the immediacy and reverence of the situation which cloaks Tavare’s album with a constantly shifting spaciousness. Unentwine sets the tone, soft minimal chords, that sometimes-melodic curl, a gently padding beat and an aura of floating post-rock suspension. “I can’t let go” are Baker’s first words, sung with a weary but resigned passiveness before Bakker echoes his phrases while the lost love song unfolds. It’s a starkly simple opening to the album but inexplicably moving, reminiscent of Red House Painters at their peak.
The contemplation continues with Lucy. This begins deceptively, almost disconnected as if the trio are feeling their way until, with a minor upturn in Baker’s guitar pattern, the band magically glide together. The lyric seems psychedelic and imagined, colourfully spiked with “gold and green“, “blue and white” but connected by a scene-stealing hook, “Too small to be so high, the shape of Lucy dancing“. There’s a slight tempo-change breezing through midway before the trio return to their unhurried focus with the clear sightedness of Mimi and Low.
The live, tentative feel of the recording somehow makes the songs more vibrant. With minimal overdubs and the church’s natural reverberations the music’s honesty is exposed. The underlying pace of ‘Too Small To Be So High’ may be in slow motion but the tension Tavare create tingles. When reworking the J.Mascis, ‘Green Mind’ confessional Thumb the band hones in on the melancholy and brings another dimension into the frame with gently mirroring dual vocals. The song becomes less about ‘me’ and more about ‘us’. El Oceano shimmers atmospherically through a peel of guitar and bass with Muñoz’s sombre spoken word swaying as the cymbals lap. There’s poetry in the motion here plus the shock of some loose Frith slide-ology from Baker as the tune submerges. Perhaps closing track Ghosts finds Tavare at their most dramatic, a sense of finality clinging to the solemn guitar and stark processional beat. “Small bright star-lights fade to nothing” Bakker sings with a saddening despair.
Lightness of touch is also fundamental to ‘Too Small To Be So High’ which means that the playful instrumental Left Behind gently nudges rather than shakes the overall mood. With jazz twinges in the melody and a shuffling swing underpinning the guitar weave, momentum gets built with real care. Even a more forceful cuts like You Are All At Once, avoids being overwrought and devoid of subtleties. There’s a Mogwai ring to Baker’s protracted chords which respond to the near whispered vocal while the coda, all strums, big bass notes and rumbling toms, delivers a gradual crescendo in proportion to Tavare’s sonic principles.
Generally ‘Too Small To Be So High’ is less abstract than much of the work that Baker, Bakker and Muñoz have previously focused on. There’s certainly little of the avant-punk noise ambience of the drummer and bassist’s music in VROUW! and less of the experimental tangents which characterise Baker’s other projects. You might also say that Tavare’s debut approaches rock music convention but this resonant recording is not about courting accessibility. The album needed to connect with base, universal feelings simply and directly. It’s through these powerfully delicate songs that the trio have endeavoured to do just this and without doubt they have succeeded.
Get your copy of ‘Too Small To Be So High’ by Tavare from your local record store or direct from Katuktu Collective (cassette US) or Cruel Nature Recordings (cassette UK/EU) or God Unknown Records (Vinyl)
