“Tramadol With Fear” starts with quite possibly the most lackadaisical drum playing I’ve ever heard. A genius move, as it captures the lethargic and offbeat essence of the track – and of the album – in only five seconds; it is the most representative, telling introduction we could have hoped for. In the background, loose chords are being played, the last one abruptly cut off as if to make way for that shamelessly amorphous drum break… A drum breaks which incidentally begins early and encroaches on the previous, somewhat regular beat. The drums don’t seem to rely on the beat or anything remotely related to time; they just come flooding in like a slow-motion barrage, like dropped balls bouncing with low gravity on the Moon and seen from the distorted faceplate of an astronaut in want of exoticism. For all throughout the album, we are offered a view at a decidedly strange world… Or maybe the world is normal, and only the lens through which we see it isn’t.

After that concise, eloquent introduction, we are left, unhurriedly, with ample space (a coincidence?) before the actual song begins. It is as though the tracks have been poorly delimited, and delibarately so, in yet another display of nonchalance.

Ethereal layers of sound come in one at a time, with the click of a drumstick popping in for absolutely no reason at all at 0:19. This curious visitor actually invites us to get past the guitar layers and take a closer look at the details, all the small critters that had been obtruding time and again since the start of the “proper” song. On second listen, we notice all of those little random sounds happening here and there and endowing the brew with more life and allure (on that, you can also read what I wrote about the track “Sitting Up On Our Crane” by Pond, Nicholas Allbrook’s fabulous band). Voices, artifacts, sounds whose origins we will never know: such is the ornamental background population of Allbrook’s world in this track. In the meantime, the guitars at the foreground follow melody lines seemingly haphazardly, sometimes playing the wrong notes, skipping some or sounding late. Allbrook’s comforting voice joins in, with every sound echoing again and again. The vocals in particular will resonate more and more as the song unravels, the words bouncing and bouncing in our head until thoughts overlap and become nearly incomprehensible.

At 3:25, a passage of classical music is mixed in, out of the blue, with at times a strange synergy occurring with the other elements, their interplay an untemporal call and response, as it were. When the time breach ends, the classical music is replaced by a completely unrelated drumbeat in the background, from 3:50 to 4:17, almost imperceptible but definitely present and contributing to the overall feel of the track. Always those details!

Once again, sounds come in, repeat, stop, the only logic being that there is none.

And then, at 4:20, the bubbling arpeggio we had caught a glimpse of at 1:25 is finally let loose in one short yet intense, magnificent build-up.

Finally, the guitar melody duly, gently comes to an end… but no, it has to somewhat panic at the very last moment and speed up… until the snare sound that had inaugurated the track suddenly puts an end to it all one second later.

Nicholas Allbrook makes us travel spaces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTsLBum7k0Y

Read also my review of the track “Sitting Up On Our Crane” by Nicholas Allbrook’s band Pond; as well as my story full of twists and turns of going to a Pond concert.