CHOIRS OF THE EYE

It is on this album that KAYO DOT reveals to us their unique brand of music, mixing cafe jazz sounds with doom metal, with avant-garde and dissonant harmonies and melodies, with very post-modern lyrical approaches, with space and silence and drone, with melodrama and overplaying, and lots of other things I'm probably leaving out.

We've seen this before, haven't we?

I say this because this album feels more like a MAUDLIN OF THE WELL album to me. It doesn't quite seem like TOBY DRIVER, main songwriter as well as doing just about every instrument yet invented, had a firm idea of what this group could do unique from his prior one. If you were wondering why people are hung up on the connection between Kayo and maudlin (always lowercase that word in reference to motW; it is simply the way of things), Toby, it is this album.

To be honest, I don't differentiate these songs much when listening to it. It's not that they don't have unique sonic signatures, but more that none of them really stand out. I mean this in the best possible way; I get so lost in them that I never look up what song I am hearing. The only tune I can pick out is "The Manifold Curiosity", and this is only because Toby announces it with the unwrinkling of (presumably) the lyric sheet followed by reading off the name. Well, also the beautiful poem he reads at the end in which he lists mundane items within which he sees beauty. It sounds contrived and I won't quote it for fear of turning you off, but it is quite moving in context and is something I actually find quite beautiful on its own after hearing it. Those couple minutes are my favorite part of this entire record are right up there with my favorite parts of Mr. Driver's entire career.

This is a very good album, but not quite different enough to really make me think it is a masterpiece. I love it to death and listen to it very often, but this only gets four stars.