On the whole, I consider myself to be a credulous man but I can’t shake a deeply held suspicion that this album has been designed with the definite intention of confounding and annoying its listeners, and especially its reviewers – just take a look at that wordcount-defying name and title. The thing is though, that Tie Your Shoes… do this with such a playful sense of humour and at times with such wonderful musical subtlety that much of the album turns out to be a pleasure to listen to; an always provocative, often uncomfortable and occasionally tantamount-to-unlistenable sort of a pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless.
Tie Your Shoes… are an experimental band, and I’m using that term not in the normal, lazy reviewery way for things that sound a bit different, but in a proper John Cage’s mid-50s definition way. In other words, they seem to be focussing on the unforeseen elements of music making. I doubt they had a single clue what many of the sounds were going to be when they flipped them round, cut them up and showered them in delay and reverb, or that they knew what the ‘songs’ were going to be like before they assembled them, and I am certain that they weren’t aiming for any sort of genre aesthetic when doing so. Jesus it’s easy to sound pretentious when writing about this sort of thing. So back to basics, what does it all actually sound like?
Well, starting at the bottom end, the most unpleasant and annoying track is actually the last, ‘Kung Fu Annie’. There is a wilfully annoying beeping sound throughout (somewhere between a reversing lorry, the countdown to an explosion, and some important bit of medical equipment) over pattering drums, and random snippets of both a guitar and flute, none of which bears any resemblance to each other and it simply appears to be lots of different noises played together for no apparent reason. A close second in the maddening-the-listener stakes is ‘You’re A Gas Man’ which sounds like it’s twanged on a ruler and typed on a keyboard at the same time, but with neither having any awareness of the other sound. Extremely unsettling, and listening to it twice in a row just now has made me feel slightly motion-sick.
On the other side of the coin, however, lies the absolutely beautiful ‘A Shiny Sea of Knives’, with its wonderful meandering flute line. It’s the closest they get to a ‘proper song’, and is a surprising and soothing relief in the middle of the album. Better still is the crisper style brought to ‘Countdown Timer to Centipede Release’ and ‘Ghosts With Widely Spaced Teeth’ by centring them around a ukulele. The latter is particularly effective, with looped hand-claps, uke and bass weaving in and out of each other, and in and out of time with each other, creating a barely-controlled, strangely hyperactive mood, reminiscent of a twitchy, glitchy Iberian-style folk song.
So, plusses and minuses as ever – what to conclude? Well, first, that whoever made this album is very talented. Second, that they were probably taking the piss with much of it – from the gentle mockery of Oxford’s trend for over-complicated band names and album titles, through the hammy German SS officer accents in the opening interwoven chant section to the aggravating beep that ends the album. Perhaps they’ll find it very funny that I’ve taken it seriously, but in amongst all the things that seem designed to perplex, there is some thrilling and surprising music.