Rating: 2.5 Pulses
TCHTOB opens with a series of screams. The rest of the album may make you want to scream.
Jared Micah and Hats is a Murfreesboro-based collaboration that plays progressive, independent rock. The music is strange, mostly slow, repetitive and somewhat chaotic. Instrumentation ranges from drums, bass, cello, violin, tuba, keyboards and guitars, to noises made from hands, toy instruments, melodica and a bunch of bell-like instruments.
The songs are led by a vocal that seems to waver and slide around pitches.
TCHTOB is a very strange album. Most songs drone on and rarely land in territory that makes you feel good. some places on the album the sounds simply make you cringe.
As far as I can tell, the closest this album gets to a theme is some sort of strange religious (or anti-religious) statement. Mostly though, the lyrics, like the music, don’t seem to be connected. They jump from place to place and never really say anything easily recognizable.
Some might like this because it’s eclectic and different. I just felt like it was over the top. It was almost like these guys were trying so hard to avoid anything that could be considered normal, they forgot to make things sound good.
There are high points among the chaos though. Song 3, “The Magic Is On!,” drops into a beautifully melodic verse backed by a smooth finger picked acoustic guitar. Song 6, “Giddy Up,” has a very strong chorus.
Several other songs momentarily drop into something amazing, but then promptly degrade. The one song that really works as a whole was the last one. “I and Them” is a slow, somber piece with beautiful melodic flow. It stands out because of vocal clarity and control?you can actually understand the words, and they are interesting. The song progresses nicely and sections repeat where they feel like they should. It also has some colorful, spacey background vocals that will leave you floating in your mind. The only part that I didn’t like was the end, where they somehow morph their vocals into something that sounds like a cow, then repeat the same line a few too many times. Even so, the track is excellent and almost makes the album worth having by itself.
Overall, I would only recommend this album to someone who really wants to listen to something different, just because it’s different. The band failed to really do anything that exciting. Hopefully future efforts will be more collected.
