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Pianos Become The Teeth

Wait For Love

Written by: PP on 06/01/2019 05:23:58

Those of you who were hoping for "Keep You" to be an experiment limited to just a single album's worth of songs will be disappointed to discover that Pianos Become The Teeth's fourth album "Wait For Love" can be largely categorized as more of the same. It's essentially a logical continuation of the fragile soundscape on "Keep You", this time packaged in a more confident expression. Where its predecessor was often awkwardly shy about its radical stylistic change, "Wait For Love" internalizes the atmospheric post-rock soundscape and goes about it in a more determined fashion.

A good example is "Bitter Red", a hauntingly beautiful piece that exposes the soothing range of Kyle Durfey wide open. The minimalistic, shy persona we heard on "Keep You" is replaced by an indie-flavored singer with oomph and power in his voice. The result is a double-edged sword: on one hand, Pianos Become The Teeth sound more polished and smoother than ever, however, some of the raw magic showcased in the stunning melodies on "Keep You" is no longer present, resulting in more straight-forward sounding songs, for the lack of a better expression. That being said, the post-rock ambiance is by definition depth-laden and thus a challenging listen: you will be required to listen to this a few times properly before it starts growing on you.

A major criticism of the album is its stylistic uniformity: all songs sound so exceptionally similar that it's difficult to distinguish in between them. Some of the most powerful moments during "Keep You" were during the passages were Durfey's voice felt like it was millimeters from breaking into a scream. Such climaxes don't come up regularly on this album, unfortunately, so the tracks blend into each other at a regrettable frequency. One can't help but think what would happen if they experimented with a little screamo here and there for variety's sake, but those days are in the past now is what can be understood from both of these releases.

So what to make of the record then? It's good: just not spell-binding like "Keep You" was. The raw emotional charge of "Repine" or "Ripple Water Shine" just isn't there to the same extent, and therefore the songs fail in stickiness. The real question is, however, where can they go from here that won't saturate their sound into oblivion if the next album is "Keep You", part three.

Download: Bitter Red, Dry Spells, Fake Lightning
For the fans of: Prawn, Mogwai, Movements
Listen: Facebook

Release date 16.02.2018
Epitaph