Do Make Say Think - Stubborn Persistent Illusions

A Closer Listen

A specific passage during my first listen to the new Do Make Say Think record – the band’s first for eight years – made me realise they still have something profoundly special to offer.  It arrives two minutes into “And Boundless”, after an unexpectedly pounding diversion of rolling drums and strobe-like electronics. The drums have ceased, hushed by noodling guitar. A jarring chord once resounding, now waning. Two minutes have now passed. The drums tiptoe back in and a lead guitar introduces a blissful, counter-rhythmic melody. The passage is remarkable not so much for what it is, but where it is. Expertly sequenced, it arrives offering respite for the weary – a valley between precipitous peaks that ironically marks the record’s transcendence.

2009’s Other Truths focused on transitions, the Toronto-based band exploring longer-form, more compositional songwriting. It signified a slight divergence from the hazy, rustic excursions that have long been the band’s signature, arguably epitomised in 2002’s & Yet & Yet. While as long in the tooth as fellow Canadian post-rock luminaries Godspeed (and certainly more prolific), DMST have spawned fewer imitators and managed to chisel out more or less for themselves a large cavity in the genre for their inimitable pastoral-inspired post-rock (past-rock, perhaps).

With the band now officially in their third decade, Stubborn Persistent Illusions nonetheless reflects an energised group of musicians revelling in a second wind. Electronics feature more strongly than ever before. Its occasional bombast and loudness surprises. An overarching concept unifies the tracks. Opener “War On Torpor” starts with a brash, almost staccato drum pattern and furious tremolo acoustic guitar. Breathlessly urgent, the track in time calms a touch to something more recognisable – the drums restless and dictating the mood, in true DMST style – but it soon builds back to a cathartic echo of the start.

While somewhat misleading, “War On Torpor” introduces a set that does mark a return of sorts to more focused songwriting – but one that also coasts in the transitional tailwind of Other Truths. This is best shown in the wonderful and sprawling “Horripilation”, whose synth segues, shuffling drums and polyrhythmic guitar lines combine the finest of old DMST and new. “As Far As The Eye Can See” rejects an easy switch between its two acts in favour of an elaborate interval. For an entire minute, the band sets the stage with post-production effects and hissing synths before slowly raising the curtain on the final act. These stand-out tracks are eclipsed only by the masterful centerpiece, the one-two of “Bound” and “And Boundless”, which cleave to one another without seam. The 12-minutes of music transition from calm, chiming guitars and shuffling drums through a pounding rhythmic hook to the heady heights already described.

The band takes further tentative steps from familiar idylls with a nod to a narrative. Given the set centrepiece, it’s no surprise that a Buddhist poem about boundlessness and recurrence was its genesis. Invoking something of the spirit of meditation, so often mischaracterized as emptying the mind, the poem depicts a wild mind reveling in rather than quashing the arbitrary avenues it ambles down. Buddhism teaches that examining such thoughts promotes internal well-being by giving one a clearer reflection of self. Many of the track titles convey thoughts and feelings both instinctive and irrepressive (“Horripilation”, “A Murder of Thoughts”, “Return, Return Again”). The flowing, perambulatory nature of the lengthier tracks invokes the spirit of such feral thoughts; the occasional repeated motif – as at the end of “And Boundless” – reminding that all are linked in the subconscious, no matter their darkness or strangeness.

At over an hour long, the LP starts to lose some of its thrust toward its close. “Shlomo’s Son” is the weakest of the several softer passages, while “Return, Return Again” starts with an infectious guitar ostinato that nods to math-rock, but soon withers to an open-ended rather than tidy conclusion. It’s a conclusion at least in keeping with the narrative. Stubborn Persistent Illusions is loose in both concept and, at times, adherence to the DMST blueprint. In this way does the band truly exemplify their boundless spirit. (Chris Redfearn-Murray)

Available here

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Opener ‘War On Torpor’ sounds like the gang have been on charge for eight years and are chomping at the bit to burn up stores of energy. It rolls in on a rising cymbal, followed swiftly by James Payment’s drumming, which has never been so frenzied and animated. All the other players match him at a similarly frantic pace that makes for smile-inducing ‘we’re back!’ moment.

Unlike many of their more contemplative works, this record’s strength lies in its more bombastic moments. Their tendency to blend loud and quiet moments with rises and falls is wielded even more effectively than in the past. Subtlety plays no part in the bash, bash, bash of drums on ‘Bound,’ and yet it remains a great deal more satisfying than it has any right to be. Similarly, ‘And Boundless’ is lent a sense of emergency by sounding like an evacuation alarm. There’s never been so much drama on a DMST album, and this latest evolution is a thrill.

The ten-minute-plus ‘Horripilation’ neatly summarises the album’s potency and should go down as one of their finest. Within its running time, there is a wealth of detail and narrative flow to enjoy. It contains moments of shimmering quiet amongst the compelling perpetual motion mustered through swaths of electronics, the glimmer of guitar and nuanced percussion. And with it, they’ve created their most immersive and convincing piece yet.

Much like that track embraces instances of beauty and peace there are further songs that allow for space amidst fevered elation. ‘A Murder Of Thoughts’ evokes a more meditative pace via steel guitar and languid, gentle percussion, and ‘As Far As The Eye Can See’ has a zephyr-like breeziness courtesy of its dancing guitar lines. They chose to end the record with the hopefully titled and resolutely upbeat ‘Return And Return Again,’ and its unadulterated joy. It feels like the musical equivalent of grinning, and that of a band really relishing their pursuit.

It really is a rarity to find artists this far into their career, and after such a sustained break, sound so fresh and positive. Clearly, rather than lying dormant these individuals kept spinning along with the rest of the world, and their return is a great deal richer for it. As a genre post-rock is certainly stubborn and persistent in the face of rocky times for guitar music, but its value is no illusion if Do Make Say Think’s latest is anything to go by.

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Listening to the Toronto band’s new album, I wished upon myself an experiment: What if I heard one of these tracks without knowing it was Do Make Say Think? I’m sure “Horripilation,” at more than ten minutes long with its braided guitars and dual drums, would have given the band away immediately. But other songs would have kept their secret, and so there is much newness in which to revel on Stubborn Persistent Illusions, the band’s first album since 2009’s Other Truths, which will sound both familiar and peculiar to anyone who has spent time with their previous music.

Even the most arcane genres have tropes, and post-rock has built up plenty of its own. The most well-defined and obvious are often derided (or celebrated) as “crescendocore,” a self-explanatory tag that doesn’t quite pin down a group like Do Make Say Think. Yes, they are often building up to something in their songs, but not always in volume or drama. The group, who shares members with the recently revived Toronto indie outfit Broken Social Scene, has the well-oiled sound of a band in its third decade, a chemistry required to compose such experimental rock and make it sound natural instead of regimented. They don’t always sound tight, but they never sound apart.

Stubborn Persistent Illusions has the immediate trappings of a Do Make Say Think record. “War on Torpor,” which is unusually charged up from its first moments, can feel like it’s spinning in place as a result. “Horripilation” might be immediately identifiable as a DMST song—the clean, almost bumbling guitar riffs have a delicate sturdiness in their repetition—but as it winds around in minutes-long sections, the group uncovers new wrinkles in their sound. Two minutes in, a snare drum sounds downright funky all alone like that, and a few minutes later, a bass drum marches into a gallop. It’s not just that it sounds like a Do Make Say Think recording, it covers distance like one, a marathon approach: themes are repeated like track workout sets, interludes play out like lazy jogs, the home stretch feels like an accomplished return.

At their core, DMST are a guitars and drums group—two of each—but they’ve often let other instruments perform the cinematic lifts of their mid-song interludes. A couple minutes into “Her Eyes on the Horizon,” the horns take over entirely, slowing things to a creak so that the band can rebirth the original theme on a refreshed, sanctified canvas. In this way, Do Make Say Think’s songs don’t demand attention so much as reward it. The album is easy to let play through, but sometimes hard to feel intimate with its complexity. It makes for music that’s wonderful to live with, encouraging repetition while allowing for unconcentrated listening.

Like most post-rock outfits, DMST invest heavily in timbre—their guitars variously ring, buzz, shudder, and twinkle—but they rarely let things get atmospheric, instead grounding their music in weaving, persistent riffs. The album’s frantic centerpiece, “And Boundless,” is propped up by a misdirecting set-up track called “Bound.” The first song builds and collapses a twinkling surge, but it doesn’t pay off in the way most DMST pieces do. “And Boundless” is a relentless and unnerving march by comparison, built on imposing, siren-like guitar strums and crashing drums, this from a band frequently and accurately pegged as pastoral. Even at their loudest, DMST are never rollicking or spinning out of control; here they’ve harnessed and reigned in one of their most nerve-wracking works into an opus that winds around like a top prowling around a table.

Elsewhere, “As Far As the Eye Can See” finds the band at their calmest, playing grazing tunes built around the type of filigree guitar-riffs-as-theme they’ve made into a hallmark. It’s an effect that produces an internal logic, in which a song can feel like an island with its own ecosystem, and an album an archipelago. It’s challenging to find your way inside. In the oscillation from serenity to cinematic triumph, their music can seep into your conscious and float around your daily life, not so much a soundtrack as a pliable accompaniment. Even when it’s not competing for your attention, Stubborn Persistent Illusions feels impossible to put down.