iLiKETRAiNS – Elegies to Lessons Learnt
This album really, really is bloody good. iLiKETRAiNS specialise in a kind of doom-laden post-rock which makes them sound like some godawful Gothic emo college ruff-ruff-ruff rock group, which they most certainly are not. What they are is basically an indie guitar band with a particular talent for building from a low menace to a thunderous wall of noise in pretty much every song.
In fact, for a group whose template barely changes at all from one track to the next, I find it quite perplexing that I don’t find their songs samey, but I don’t. Maybe it’s like The Wedding Present where the sound, particularly early on, was so distinctive, that initially that was all you heard. If you take the signature TRAiNS sound out of the equation then there’s a lot more tune there than you realise, albeit on a very, very slow burn.
I’ve read a lot of reviewers who don’t quite know how to approach the extra elements of the iLiKETRAiNS project, specifically the animations and the historical basis of the songs. So firstly, I’d like to look at the music in isolation as if they were just any other rock band. Basically, the songs tend to start off with a sort of smouldering malevolence which will either build slowly into a battering crescendo, or will continue to simmer, glaring menacingly at you for the duration of the song without ever quite becoming more than a shadowy threat. Songs like the gorgeous Come Over bring strings and ghostly choral vocals to the mix as well, with plenty more of the trademark cornet. All the songs generate a sort of wellspring of emotion that gradually bursts over you as the story comes to a head, flooding you with the pathos of the narrative and the swell of the music.
There is a lot more of course. Each song is a story: an often obscure historical story that informs the music and is conveyed in part by the song and in part by the phenomenal stop-motion animated videos that Ashley, the cornet player, makes for each. Live these images play across the backdrop of the stage too, and the album comes with an essay booklet explaining the basic story around which each song has been woven.
Remember the old days, before downloading, when you used to sit and pore over the lyrics booklet as you listened to a new album for the first time? Well here you’ll want to have Google handy because learning about each and every one of these often-lost historical moments as you absorb the music makes listening to Elegies to Lessons Learnt one of the richest and most satisfying experiences of the year.
iLiKETRAiNS – Death of an Idealist
iLiKETRAiNS – Come Over
post-rock really is king of the utterly meaningless labels castle.
ilike i liketrains. this album really is damnably good in the same way that those slightly quieter neurosis offshoots remind me of dark clouds and beaten dogs and women crying in rainstrewn alleys.
it is the old-fashioned completeness of it all that appeals to me – image, packaging, sound, videos, hair. okay not the hair.
I do rather agree with you about the post-rock thing. Generally I try and keep my labels as broad and vague as possible, but it seems to kind of fit here.
I love the fact that they do it all as well, from the packaging to the videos and all. I have an interview with them waiting to be written up actually, which should be quite good. It’s a whore of a week here at Proper Job though, so it may be a while yet.
This is dreamy!
Nice, eh? They are truly phenomenal live as well.
I’m just not getting this at all. Isn’t it a bit lugubrious?
*Rushes off to check dictionary*
Well yes it is. Gloomy, morose at times, and very foreboding. But when they go mental and start making a ferocious racket there’s little else like them at the moment.
It may help that I saw them live first and heard them recorded second – perhaps because I’d seen them rock out already I kind of had that in mind when I was listening to the music.
Try some of their videos. Terra Nova might be the easiest one to get into easily – it’s a genuinely touching little movie.
c&b–this may help: imagine a pot of rice on the stove, sometimes boiling over the edges and getting all over the place, other times at a steady, low roil. that’s the image that comes to my mind, anyway. a nice hot pot of rice.
Apart from comparing one of my favourite bands to a bland, flavourless staple food that feeds the masses almost exclusively when they afford no better, that is a brilliant description Marcy.