| “Ol’e Nessie” goes soft-loud-soft-loud-soft like Slint and All Their Buddies, but it doesn’t sound like it imagines it’s reinventing the wheel in the process. It just flows. So that when the next song rages in like a train through a bakery window, it’s doesn’t feel forced or defensive. (The song, “Burning Man,” is great, by the way, sustaining an unbelievably harsh and tight pace for nearly three minutes before coming to a breathtaking, on-a-dime halt.) And when the song after that begins with some proggy noodling and a laid-back beat, you know you don’t have to worry that the whole thing’s gone to the dogs. Throughout multiple listenings it becomes clear that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, which in this case isn’t an attack on Remission’s constituent parts, which are all great, but rather an observation that even if these songs are great on their own, which they are, they’re even better when taken as a piece. |
