International Anthem / Nonesuch
When a long-established band shifts working arrangements from being based around close neighbourhood proximity and fecund productivity to wider geographical dispersal and only-when-the-diaries-align infrequency of output, to accommodate more outside life commitments and other musical outlets, anxiety arises amongst the faithful upon the arrival of new long-awaited album. Whilst few retained followers expect – or even desire – a pioneering rebirth, to have patient loyalty unrewarded by something lacklustre can be doubly painful when a restitutional follow-up is unlikely to follow in a hurry.
Such trepidations undoubtedly come pre-attached to Touch, the first Tortoise long-player in nine years — with the multi-talented fivesome now distributed between Chicago (Doug McCombs, Dan Bitney), Los Angeles (Jeff Parker, John Herndon) and Portland (John McEntire) in the US; construction conducted via creatively challenging multi-city recording sessions starting back in 2021; and a somewhat unexpected label relocation from the steadfast Thrill Jockey to a new home at International Anthem. Yet – thankfully – fears surrounding this belated sequel to 2016’s The Catastrophist don’t translate to a hot mess of an assemblage, even if it’s not quite the comeback special that some of us might have hoped for.
Having long ago decided – after 1998’s still-tremendous epic double-sized TNT — to keep their main event releases self-restricted to a traditional single-length vinyl duration, Touch keeps a lid on itself within that metric, going for studio-enabled tightness over wild abandon. Consequently, while there was perhaps a window to let in more of the looseness and musicianship of their renowned live shows and other projects, to stretch out things more organically, this collection instead goes for ten densely crafted yet compact cuts that play out like self-referential redistillations of the shared Tortoise DNA. This isn’t necessarily a bad move, as the reshuffled deck certainly has some strong cards.
Thereafter, the freer floating “Works And Days” dips into the dubbier terrain of the ensemble’s eponymous debut, but with added flourishes of the pastoral and Steve Reich-infused passages within TNT before bleeding into “Elka”, which echoes the pulsing electro explorations dispersed across 2009’s Beacons Of Ancestorship.
At the alluring midpoint matters move meditatively between the guest violin and cello-augmented “Promenade à Deux” (featuring a low-key mix of Ennio Morricone orchestrations and progular synth smears), the prowling kosmische of “Axial Seamount” (that nods back to parts of The Catastrophist) and on to the languid submersions of “A Title Comes” (which again remembers the cinematic manoeuvres within It’s All Around You).
The closing “Night Gang” majestically rises, promising a lot — with moody widescreen callbacks to the beatscaping and spaghetti westernisms scattered amidst 1996’s much-admired Millions Now Living Will Never Die — but it ends prematurely at exactly five minutes, leaving a frustrating sense of unfinished business, at the same time as giving the impression of an edited-down extract from a longer and more ambitious piece.
Whilst arguably having missed a few opportunities, Touch is nevertheless a roundly decent latter-day Tortoise record that reassures us that the internal alchemical artistry – even if not as effervescent as it once was – retains a distinctive potency. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait for another best part of a decade to find out if there is more left in the shared sonic tank.-Adrian-
