Gum Takes Tooth – Arrow

Rocket

Gum Takes Tooth have waited five years to follow up their second album Mirrors Fold, but it would appear to have been well worth the wait. The wildness of the live spectacle is not so apparent when listening to this album, but the amount of ideas and angles that the duo has on drum and electronic sound-making is phenomenal.

Opener “Cold Chrome Hearts” is just plaintive distorted vocals, which sound as if they are coming from underwater, and a gentle rhythm that appears as if it is being beaten out on the hull of a shipwrecked boat. It pulses and vibrates, but in that strange way that sound travels through water. It is difficult to put an aural handle on it, but that changes entirely with “The Arrow”; tribal drumming, car-alarm rhythm, post-techno soundscape, all are present, and these different rhythmic elements all vie for their place in the ragged whole. They merge and conjoin, then dissipate and reappear to create a dizzying tableau through which buzz-saw techno keys tear and twist. The vocals are a whole other thing, and their insistent mantra is smeared through the mix like some kind of glue being used to patch the thing together.

Throughout the whole album, the drums are wide and expansive, but have that welcoming inclusivity that comes from a tribal direction. At times it is the vocals that bring a spectral, almost insubstantial, feel to some of the tracks, like a reaction to the strength and power of the synths. Interestingly, there are a few tracks here that are just snippets, almost like segues into another part of the album. The distant travel sounds of “Slowly Falling” and the near silence of “Apogee” make the power of “Borrowed Lies” even more effective. Double drumming, this time with assistance from Jaxson Payne, gives a rolling swagger, and a heartworn clarity to the vocals certainly changes the mood. The electronic squelches are vicious, and the little fills that each drummer makes as they skip and slide around one another seem to fill the entire vista with percussion, but without overwhelming the track.

The brief Eastern whirlwind of “Dream Circle/Cloud Cycle” gives way to the far more haphazard “Fights Physiology”. It is much more difficult to concentrate here, and the synth sounds are disturbing and unwieldy, skipping around the smeared and sticky vocals like wasps around beer dregs. The mood halts again as the slow and almost non-existent space ambience of “Seizure” gives way to the very slow and queasy half speed of “A Still Earth”. Here, the mind is stuck or starting to fray, and the whole thing sounds like the end of a mammoth twenty-four-hour session. The drummer’s arms like lead and the synths are heard through mists of dry ice, as if all those molecules are struggling to hold the structure of the song from disintegrating into torpor.

It is a cool and unexpected direction for Gum Takes Tooth, which couldn’t be more different than closer “A House Built Of Fire”. It is so subtle and the sounds are clean and steady, the drumming almost anodyne in its attempt not to upset. Unsurprisingly, just when you think that it is ending on a bit of a damp squib, everything breaks loose from its moorings and descends into anarchy. This is how the album should end, and end it does in a shower of sparks and steam. Arrow is a vibrant and chaotic listen that contains fun for all the family.

-Mr Olivetti-