Pick Up Sticks

Fitting in perfectly with the Pacific Northwest's experimental indie scene is They Shoot Horses Don't They, a multi-instrumental, avant-garde-flavored group out of Vancouver who make polyrhythmic, Eastern European folk-influenced rock reminiscent of early Modest Mouse, Pink Mountain, and KRS labelmates the Paper Chase. Leader and guitarist Nut Brown has a voice that borders on frantic as he sing-talks his way through the ten tracks on the band's second full-length, Pick Up Sticks, speaking abstractly and sometimes nonsensically of body parts and magical lands and strange relationships, sometimes all in the same song. This is music that's hard to categorize, and because of that, it's easy to forget that most of the album, in fact, is rather unvaried. Because both Brown and the instrumentation behind him avoid actual melody and focus instead on layers and fills, the songs have a tendency to blend into one another, creating a 40-minute set of horn bursts and guitar strums and keyboard squeals and bass drum kicks on the downbeat, a kind of crazed circus rant that, despite the number of instruments used (nine in this case), sounds very hollow and even sparse, like the gypsy wagons clanging down a bumpy dirt road. There are a few pieces in particular, like "Wrong Directions," with its fantastic opening phrase — "That them there finger's going to point the way/You best pay attention 'cause it just might sway.../In the middle of a maze where a beast does dwell/By the looks of them bones that beast eats well" — or the dark, cinematic feel of "Busted Bell" that stick out from the crowd and show off the band's talents, but a little too often They Shoot Horses Don't They seem more concerned with sounding musical instead of actually being musical. Which isn't to say that Pick Up Sticks is all talk and no walk: there's a great deal of creativity and innovation here, but there's just something missing — greater attention to melody? A change in formula? — that keeps the album from really stepping away from being merely unusual towards being something truly great.