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How in the hell has an album like Still Water been floating around for six months and I’m just now stumbling over it? It is so good it is important!
The fact that Told Slant are a band from Brooklyn* which doesn’t sound like every other band from Brooklyn shouldn’t go without mentioning. While thousands of dudes with a Vox and a desire to be cool look for catchier ways to say nothing Felix Walworth reminds us that there are still some guys out there with enough balls and grit to artistically say something real… and that is barely half of what is great about this band. There’s a quiet dynamic to their music which makes them seem susceptibly simple yet with every song comes a developing clarity that this isn’t as post-emo as some chillwave hipsters would love to declare them to be but instead are a band channeling The Modern Lovers in an oddly neo-Jello Biafra/Isaac Brockish sort of way similar to how we hoped Jacob Dylan‘s music would eventually reincarnate his father’s (it has not).
Still Water is a perfectly building album, each track a time-lapsed still-frame shot of a skyscraper being erected from the vantage point of Walworth’s heart. Only when the album ends does the hammering and shaping that both Oliver Kalb and Maddy Strassler have been blessed with getting to take part in makes complete sense. This may not be the happiest album, instead it is beautiful, something far more timeless.
……The key to realizing just how rare of an album Told Slant have created blatantly surfaces in the fact that I can’t remember an album since starting HCK! that comes even close to being as difficult to draw a single track from for showcasing what a band is about. My personal favorite is “I Am Not” but there’s so much to what they quietly yet collectively accomplish on Still Water that I’m really torn between what the right way to experience these guys for the first time should be.
……Why are complete albums such a lost and under-appreciated art-form? My being a huge catalyst for that problem in no way stops me from finding that offensive. The focal point to this album is Walworth coming to terms with his situation be it, friends, girlfriends, sister, whatever yet the way it comes together feeling personal without being self-indulgent is rare. Unfortunately having feelings is about the most uncool thing in the world so we can count out the scene-kids and johnny rockers as part of the Told Slant parade.
……The only real advice I have is to allow yourself fifteen minutes to either drive alone or at the least slip the headphones on without distraction and see exactly where your loyalties lie when the time is up, this is a hard album to walk away from midstream so you should probably allot more time to be fair to yourself.
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Told Slant – Bandcamp | Facebook
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*I know for sure(ish) these guys are out of New York but the Brooklyn part I’m taking from a tag on Bandcamp.
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