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Simply put, Tortoise has spent nearly 25 years making music that defies description. While the Chicago-based instrumental quintet has nodded to dub, rock, jazz, electronica and minimalism throughout its revered and influential six-album discography, the resulting sounds have always been distinctly, even stubbornly, their own.

It’s a fact that remains true on The Catastrophist, Tortoise’s first studio album in nearly seven years. And it’s an album where moody, synth-swept jams like the opening title track cozy up next to hypnotic, bass-and-beat missives like “Shake Hands With Danger” and a downright strange cover of David Essex’s 1973 radio smash sung by U.S. Maple’s Todd Rittman. Throughout, the songs transcend expectations as often as they delight the eardrums.

Tortoise, comprised of multi-instrumentalists Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Doug McCombs, John McEntire and Jeff Parker, has always thrived on sudden bursts of inspiration. And for The Catastrophist, the spark came in 2010 when the group was commissioned by the City of Chicago to compose a suite of music rooted in its ties to the area’s noted jazz and improvised music communities.

As ever, Tortoise has conjured sounds on The Catastrophist that aren’t being purveyed anywhere else in music today. There’s a deeply intuitive interplay between the group members that comes only from two decades of experimentation, revision and improvisation. And at a time when our brains are constantly bombarded by myriad distractions, The Catastrophist reminds us that there’s something much greater out there. All we have to do is listen. — (via Artist, Label)

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Tortoise have always emphasized their connection to Chicago, and never more so than on The Catastrophist. Arriving six years after Beacons of Ancestorship, its roots date back to 2010, when Tortoise were commissioned to write music inspired by their hometown's jazz and improvised music scenes. Though they fleshed out those compositions for the album, the original project's sense of adventure remains. Fittingly, the title track has some of the closest ties to the album's beginnings, holding together shifts between knotty, busy electro-funk and the kind of brooding post-rock Tortoise helped define in the '90s with nimble drumming indebted to jazz. 

"Shake Hands with Danger" is even more audacious, nodding to the Windy City's free jazz and noise rock legacies with jabbing riffs and rhythms and chromatic percussion that sounds metallic in both senses of the word. "Gesceap"'s duel between winding synths and linear guitars feels spontaneous enough to be a rangy improvisation, while "Ox Duke" goes deep instead of wide, building on its eerily pretty vibe with meditative repetition. 

On each of The Catastrophist's tracks, the way Tortoise puts together post-rock's building blocks sounds as fresh as ever, with the band recombining a record store's worth of influences expertly and often playfully: The synth interlude "Gopher Island" recalls Mark Mothersbaugh's music for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou; "Hot Coffee" lives up to its funky title; and the closing track "At Odds with Logic" sets the album adrift on a tide of surfy guitars. 

Even the album's most unexpected moments feel completely natural. In Tortoise's largely instrumental body of work, tracks with singing would stand out anyway, but The Catastrophist's vocal cameos are also great in their own right. Todd Rittman of U.S. Maple and Dead Rider guests on what may be the album's riskiest song, a cover of David Essex's "Rock On" that brings a jagged edge to the original's jittery cool and proves that Tortoise can make verse-chorus-verse rock their own. Later, Yo La Tengo's Georgia Hubley takes a star turn on the gorgeous "Yonder Blue," a ghostly reinvention of '60s pop-soul that also recalls Broadcast and Julia Holter at their finest. 

Amidst these experiments, the band revisits fundamentals on "The Clearing Fills," a serene study in chiming guitars and electronic percussion that echoes other post-rock greats like Stereolab and Mogwai, and on "Tesseract," which, with its angular melody and tricky tempo shifts, may be the most traditionally Tortoise song here. In some ways, The Catastrophist feels like a microcosm of the band's body of work; even though they don't repeat themselves, it all comes together in some of their most immediate music to date. — (via AllMusic)

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At this point in Tortoise's career, it can be easy to take them for granted. The Chicago quintet's most influential records (Millions Now Living Will Never Die, TNT, Standards) made their marks well over a decade ago, and it's been seven years between their last full-length and The Catastrophist, the band's seventh studio album for Thrill Jockey. But as 2009's Beacons Of Ancestorship proved, Tortoise—who opened new sonic possibilities for instrumental post-rock in the '90s by folding elements of jazz, electronica, techno, dub, lounge and modernist composition into their work—remains willing and able to craft inventive hybrids deep into their career.

Tortoise has a habit of musically shapeshifting throughout the course of an album. Even by those standards, though, The Catastrophist is packed with ideas. As the story goes, the record was built from five compositions that were commissioned by the city of Chicago in 2010, when the group was asked to "compose a suite of music rooted in its ties to the area's noted jazz and improvised music communities." Having transformed those "open-form" themes (made with plenty of space for improvisation and solos) into album-ready songs for The Catastrophist, Tortoise then filled out the 11-track record with a smattering of creative whims.

After the opening title track and "Ox Duke" reacquaint you with Tortoise's angular guitars, roomy drums and layers of synths and electronic rhythms, The Catastrophist takes its first left turn. A cover of David Essex's '70s hit "Rock On," the already bizarre song is taken further into mutant pop with the help of singer Todd Rittmann. Tortoise's version is laced with slithering rhythmic noise and off-kilter atmospherics, and yet effectively pays homage to the original's sluggish, slap back-fueled chug.

This variety means that those who remember Tortoise's heyday fondly will find a handful of songs to suit their tastes, while those who follow the group because of their consistent evolution might only find select moments satisfying. The twists and turns can be compelling, but they make The Catastrophist feel somewhat lopsided, with scattered ideas too disparate to congeal as a cohesive listen. For a band that's been at it for almost 25 years (a huge accomplishment in itself), it's encouraging that Tortoise doesn't struggle to grow, and furthermore, are unafraid to risk stuffing a few too many experiments into their records. — (via Resident Advisor)

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Label: Thrill Jockey
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Coloured
Released: 2016
Genre: Rock, Electronic
Style: Alternative Rock, Post Rock, Experimental

File under: Shoegaze/Post-Rock
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