TORTOISE

standards

That Chicago-Supergroup has done it again, changing their style completely and staying the same at the exact same point of time. “Standards”, the new album of Tortoise, is filled with accomplished easy listening between murky soap-opera-music on drugs to very postmodern and artish beat-based tracks, with a few distorted guitars and electronic bleeps being thrown in for good measure. Whatever seems to be oh so easily accessible at first, suddenly shows its edges and corners, which makes this record easy to hear and hard to listen to at the same time. The warm and soothing sound hides the turbulences and agitations underneath the surface. But this is something, that every good jazz-record should achieve, and this, in my humble opinion, is where the title of the record comes from.

Tortoise deliver all originals, insofar the title of the record would be misleading, especially if you link it to jazz. There is no “Shot and chaser” on this record, nor any hint of “round midnight”. To try and oppose what the traditional meaning of “standards” has become, is what Tortoise might have had in mind, when aptly titling this record, and doing it in such a way, that it takes some time to recognize and therefore plant itself deeper into the listeners mind. Have you ever watched a young and unknown band playing in a bar in front of drunken people on holidays? These types always want to hear songs like “You are my sunshine” or anything well-known by Elvis Presley but instantly leave for the toilet as soon as someone says: “The next song was written by our bass-player.” Now, Tortoise or any of the musicians in the band wouldn’t have that problem. Not anymore, anyway, but there are similar reactions in crwods at punk-concerts, jazz-concerts, discos or any other place. So what musicians try to do, is to establish themselves, to bring their reputation up to a certain point, where they don’t have to deal with audience-expectations anymore (usually they still run after the money’s call and join the media-industry to become content, but this is far away when talking about Tortoise).

It is somehow analgous to thinking about human cloning. Maybe it boils down to just a few basic questions – e.g. how much of the character of a person is defined by the genes? Does god live? Is there a soul? – but once you have reached that shore, you are stranded. And once you have realised that you are stranded for good, life just might become a little easier. The hard time, is the days and weeks in between. The time you spend trying to figure out your sorroundings and your coordinates is a very frustrating and complicated but also very important time. You settle down, you regard other people as given and don’t try to change them anymore, you ease down. And this is where the cycle closes with Tortoise as the leading and closing end, constantly defining and redefing what the standards are, if they have to be obeyed, what parameters are acceptable and where the boundaries lie.