Alexander Tucker
Third Mouth
Thrill Jockey
It’s six albums in for this below-the-radar UK-based
experimentalist, and as his recordings become increasingly sonically
sophisticated, the similarities to Brian Eno’s mellifluous singing
voice seem to grow. At times it’s easy to imagine this as a lost reel
dating from somewhere between Taking Tiger Mountain and Another Green World, but rest assured,Tucker is no mere wannabeeno.
Percolated with intimate
and ingenious soundworlds containing looped rainfall, tangling windchimes,
primitive berimbau-like drones, glitchy percussives and hallucinatory
folds of multi-tracked hair-raising harmonising, these tunes are invention-rich
environments. Incidents from childhood, relationships and other intimacies
might provide the starting point for many of the six songs here but
don’t expect the usual singer-songwriter confessional.
Rising through
waves of bustling acoustic guitar and undulating syth tones, his words
trawl deep into the subconscious, pulling the listener on an undertow
of surreally associative games that revel in their poetic obliqueness
and abstracted imagery. Yet despite such wilful obscurity, Tucker isn’t
able to keep a good melody down. Even the most terse and cryptic of
pieces on the album has a habit of getting inside your head in the time-honoured
tradition of all good earworms. Exquisite.*
*This review first appeared in Prog.
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