Trouble Books
Gathered Tones
CD available on Own Records / Green vinyl available through Bark and Hiss / MIE Music

Listen to "Past the New Parking Deck" MP3


With this three-piece, the devil is in the detail. As on the band's 2008 release The United Colour of Trouble Books, the tracks on Gathered Tones are an intricate mash-up of percolating bleeps, found sounds, and treatments. The naive vocals forego the reliance on choruses. And for that matter, tracks often forego a continuing reliance on vocals, with instrumentation taking over and ushering songs away until they completely unfold ("Arms Full of Lemons", "Dusk Accelerator").

Gathered Tones is a tight collection of tracks which together create a warm spaciousness, conjuring up washed-out images of locations and stories ("Houseplants", "Abandoned Monorail Station"). The track "Past the New Parking Deck" is the album's single, a track which sums up the band's sound on this release. Well into the song, the vocalist intones "meet me behind the loading dock for a quick kiss and a sandwich". A simple tenderness which resonates throughout the album.

Trouble Books are not afraid to experiment, and Gathered Tones is all the better for it.

Tracklisting
"Ascending Kidney"
"Past the New Parking Deck"
"From Colfax Place"
"Arms Full of Lemons"
"Abandoned Monorail Station"
"Tropical Islands, Germany"
"Night Indoors"
"Dazzle Ships (Parts IV & V)"
"Sudden Loop"
"Dusk Accelerator"
"Houseplants"

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