The axiom “less is more” has always stuck in my craw. It’s right up there with “it is what it is” (a saying undoubtedly used to soften the blow of layoffs time and time again) on the list of phrases that cause me to double up in anger.
Often, however — like the worst stereotypes — “less is more” can fit like a glove if the crime is clever enough. Enter Under Byen, the band applauded by David Fricke as the fricke-in’ “best band in the world” before they’d even broke stateside. Since then? It’s been tough to keep critics gazing into their navels with such surety, but what UB do have is a fantastic new album full of the “less is more” ethos taken to fresh heights following a break and a live EP on the heels of their gracious Samme Stof Som Stof — not to mention the requisite, mostly unheard-of solo projects.
With Alt er Tabt, the menu consists of bass, toms, and that luxuriant voice of Henriette Sennenvaldt’s. The flossiest flourishes are keep-saked for when you need them most, and the tension-tension-tension-RELEASE gambit couldn’t be more fun, like a game of cat & mouse with no nip in sight. Sennenvaldt’s supporting cast chants like Slaraffenland (another great import, indie), ogling her voice like a bunch of pervs who can, incidentally, play a helluva string.
There aren’t any technicolor-dreamcoat outfits or vocal gymnastics. It isn’t until track six, “Unoder,” that the ensemble stops sitting on its collective hands and gets all the way down with a mean, arpeggiated instrumental sequence worthy of only the best moments of Vs and the Final Fantasy records (RIP). Piano riffing turns into string phrases turns into holy GODness. Without this terse, tense progression, the album would be, short of an exercise in boredom, incomplete; however, “Unoder” is the RELEASE I’m talking about, a welcome gasp for air after five suffocatingly sealed-off songs in a row. Not quite the respite “In Limbo” is in the grips of Kid A’s idiosyncrasies, but perhaps as rewarding as “How to Disappear Completely” (which is still saying a lot).
The effect is breathtaking (and I’m not a doctor on Seinfeld), distorted vocals eventually added overtop for that layered, kaleidoscopic feel you thought you could only find on They Were Wrong, So We Drowned or one of those Aniima albums. I’m sick of reviewers comparing the Icelandic bands to glaciers — wouldn’t Greenland bands make more sense in this context? — so I’ll just say the pace for this band — who are from Denmark besides — is… languid, save the titanic din of the aforementioned “Unoder” and the latter-album crease of “Er noget smukt glemt findes det muligvis endnu,” a freight train lodged at slot no. eight that assuages any lingering doubts with pitch-perfect strings and rattling bass lift. It scrapes the bottom of the fear barrel, then emerges drunk and ready to deliver a song. Sennenvaldt joins in, and the next thing you know, you have another triumph on your hands.
What makes it all worthwhile is the creepy wait, like sitting in a Denver dispensary and waiting for yr buds (not that I would know; I don’t have a card, dude), a bunch of sterile asst. MDs with clipboards running around. California this ain’t, people. Next time, to make it really, super-creepy/creeper, tote in yr iPod and let Alt er Tabt play. The full-length, not the single. Ready? Go.
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