Let Spin – Thick As Thieves

Efpi

The fourth album for the agile pigeonhole-dodging quartet Let Spin finds them mixing things up a little, taking ideas of pieces into the studio and working them into a lather over the course of a couple of last year’s late summer days.

This way of working, attempting to bring the vivacity of their live show into the studio, has been a great success; plus their idea to segue the ten pieces on Thick As Thieves together into one long, dizzying whole makes for a somewhat breath-taking and dramatic journey.

A spectral guitar and sax start brings warmth and tenderness and is a lovely step down into the maelstrom to come, an auspicious opening, petals of sound unfurling as the players dip their toes into the action, feeling their way, starting to spin the plates, collisions of sound marking the overlapping of territory. The segues between tracks allow Moss Freed‘s pummelling no wave guitar to nestle against Chris Williams‘ drifting spiritual sax without the batting of an eyelid, and mean the album proceeds in a constant flow leading from one mood to another.

The post-punk battery of “Red”, a messy euphoria interspersed with gravity-defying sax, whirls into “Waveform Guru”, a progressive barrage led by a tumultuous rhythm section. The group arrives at similar conclusions to the likes of Portico Quartet, but if anything inject an even greater array of ideas and tempo changes, the dynamic ranging like a giant mountaineer. The bass might start a strutting figure that is picked up and worked around by the other players, riffing on variations, unwilling to let anything settle for too long as somebody picks up another thread and that draws the others away like kittens following a length of twine.

Ruth Goller plays with Melt Yourself Down and that sense of shapeshifting is something they share, as well as a restless energy and desire to surprise the listener and the other players. At times the guitar and sax shadow one another, tiptoeing through some spiritual scenery; and at others, trading blows in the ring set up by the rhythm section.

The sequencing of the album is perfect, allowing a unique tempo to run through, giving the listener a rest, a wash of Finlay Panter‘s dishy cymbal sway. The others hold their breath, heralding an upturn into a post rock sweep with electronic neurons firing across the bows of a screaming sax. The generosity of spirit is palpable as the baton is passed from player to player, but without you really noticing the change.

Having recorded Thick As Thieves in over just two days, the atmosphere is intimate, the sounds merging, the ideas melting into one another, and although the pieces have writer credits, you feel the overlap and investment from each player. The way it can move from roiling momentum to the rootless sensation of beatless limbo is impressive and apparently totally natural; clattering, slow percussion seemingly at odds with the hyperactive bass. The crystalline pleasure of the guitar gives way to clouds of distortion as the sax moves form muscular overseer to a being of febrile sensitivity, the players knowing when to add and when to subtract.

On first listen, Thick As Thieves beguiles you into thinking a particular way; but as you peel back the layers, the improv heart reveals itself and this willingness to allow a track to dictate its own pace and direction where applicable is part of their secret. The lack of division between tracks, plus the tracks themselves going off at all sorts of tangents, means that this is an engrossing and time-teasing release and one that at the end leaves you hungry for more.

-Mr Olivetti-