Finally! A band named after a technology I could totally use! Modest Mouse frontman, Isaac Brock, discovered some serious talent in Portland via Kentucky’s Morning Teleportation and signed them to his new Glacial Pace record label. Brock also took production duties on the band’s debut album Expanding Anyway. Their sound is frantic and eclectic. They sometimes even sound like Modest Mouse with a dash 70′s guitar rock and a large intravenous dose of methamphetamine.
The tunes are frenetic, changing tone, tempo, and style on a dime. Large rock choruses give way to folk undertones then charge straight into psychedelic math rock. The descriptions are schizophrenic, but the bipolar shifts in the music are always held together with creativity and strong songwriting. The album is varied, but never seems to make a misstep. There are grinding, off-kilter guitar progressions, fiery guitar solos. samples, bits of synth, banjos, horns, and lots more sprinkled throughout the Expanding‘s solid rock core. Singer, Tiger Merritt’s voice shifts from indie rock to folks-y balladeer to a howling, angry Frank Black – often in the same song. It is hard to pick a track that sums up all their sound. The title track, “Expanding Anyway,” “Snow Frog vs. Motor Cobra,” and the epic, 9-minute “Wholehearted Drifting Sense of Inertia” (sounds like it could be a Modest Mouse album title) are great examples, but the slightly shorter “Just a Figment” may be easier to digest on first listen:
[...] for Morning Teleportation. I didn’t learn until the day before that they were opening. I reviewed their debut album in 2011 and was blown away. I was able to catch their last song – played at 7:30!!!!! – [...]