If mainstream musicians tend to present songs as polished and seamless things unto themselves, their alternative, indie and underground counterparts are more willing to let listeners detect some of the messy intricacy of the creative process.
That process can manifest as fragments, like the seeming incompleteness of many a quick Guided by Voices track, or as an honoring of analog inexpensiveness and immediacy, like the boom-box recordings made by the Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle. With SUUNS’ fifth full-length, The Witness, the manifestation comes from hearing the musicians think their way into the songs.
For the first seven minutes and 10 seconds of the album, in “Third Stream,” singer and guitarist Ben Shemie tests simple statements like “Everyone needs love” and “I’ve seen too much.” Bassist and guitarist Joe Yarmush and drummer Liam O’Neill hold back, and Max Henry—a former official SUUNS member but still a studio contributor—oozes synthesizer squiggles, drones and bubbles.
SUUNS gather their drive for “Witness Protection,” although even as the rhythm gets overtaken by a noisy sonority not unlike (but not too much like) the clanging of church bells, Shemie’s soft vocal affect and an accompanying electronic muffling generate a central feeling that would sound like calmness if not for a constant vibration of nerves.
The unease recalls Radiohead’s Thom Yorke after OK Computer, but the warping grooves of “Timebender” and “Go to My Head” have the confident introspection of Stereolab’s more downbeat passages, and the gentle experimentation brings much of the album within the post-rock thinking of Talk Talk.
Like those other bands, SUUNS don’t just meander: “The Trilogy,” a finale that dips a shoulder to Rush’s “Subdivisions” era, is almost as long as “Third Stream” but both are tightly wound. Listeners can sense the musicians thinking and deciding; fortunately, SUUNS mostly think and decide wisely.
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