Emo’s
Monday, May 18
“If you try to build a house with a sponge and a broomhandle, you’d build a different house than if you had a hammer and nails,” explains John McEntire, who plays drums, marimbas, vibes, and keyboards for Tortoise, a band from Chicago which effortlessly and efficiently defies any labels attached to them in the hindsight of the media.
Anti-rock, krautrock, prog, post-rock, post-krautrock, anything with the word “electronic,” none of these categories corral the sonic palette from which Tortoise draws in their live shows or in the studio through their singular and cohesive mix of multifarious instrumentation and electronic constructions.
“I think everyone will have a certain inclination to create things depending on what they’re working with at the moment,” says McEntire, “and I think there’s also a tendency to try and counter that whenever possible. The back and forth between those two tendencies is the primary force behind [Tortoise], and I think that can be manifested in lots of different ways.”
Their latest release for Thrill Jockey, TNT, is home to a dizzying array of these manifestations, from the raw drums and bass of the title track to the three-song electronic sequence beginning with “In Sarah, Mencken, Christ, and Beethoven There Were Women and Men” to the dominance of vibraphone and marimba in the trance of “Ten Day Interval” and the flow of “The Suspension Bridge at Iguaz� Falls.”
The sublime co-existence of seemingly disparate elements in the music of Tortoise is no surprise, considering each member’s past and present associations. McEntire hails from The Sea and Cake and Gastr del Sol, while bassist Doug McCombs still has one foot in Eleventh Dream Day and played with the For Carnation, along with David Pajo (formerly of Slint and still part-time member of Tortoise) and John Herndon. Herndon and Dan Bitney also play in Isotope 217 with the newest member of Tortoise, guitarist Jeff Parker. And so on.
“Because of our histories we tend to gravitate towards playing live a little more,” McEntire says. “I think that from a presentation perspective, that’s more appealing to an audience. At least it is to me, to see people playing instruments rather than pushing buttons on stage. Not that there’s anything wrong with pushing buttons. We all came to a point where we could have gone with a much more tech approach to the whole thing, but we decided it was better to stick with playing live as much as possible.”
Here’s to that. –Christopher Hess
This article appears in May 15 • 1998 and May 15 • 1998 (Cover).