As anyone who has ever ventured into a bright-boxed American supermarket or completed a generic Google search can tell you, an overabundance of choices is often more overwhelming than it is liberating. In creative terms, limiting oneself to a few expressive ingredients and getting the most mileage out of each of them can often yield more exciting results than being set loose in a vast studio-sea of instruments. It’s for this reason that the third and newest LP from Russian Circles, an instrumental rock/metal trio from Chicago, IL, feels so refreshing in 2009. Throughout Geneva the Russian Circles achieve a wide-screen, cinematic feel without employing a veritable neighborhood of co-conspirators (a fashionable trend as of late). Instead, they take the three conventional instruments of their genre, electric guitar, bass, and drum kit, and then spread them out with a palpable sense of urgency to enveloping, starry expanses.
A particularly apparent example is the drum work. It’s thrilling to hear drummer Dave Turncrantz attack these songs with an aggressive melodic and compositional curiosity rarely seen in this type of music. His drums sound live, real, and relevant. Absent are the metronomic or sterile qualities that contemporary large-scale rock groups often rely on. The resulting sensation of immediacy serves to guide the other players (guitarist Mike Sullivan and bassist Brian Cook) and most of the album to extremely rewarding places, despite the predictability of its structure.
I’m referring now to the peaks and valleys, the loud and soft dynamic that most instrumental rock bands use to create narrative in the absence of a vocalist. In Geneva’s case, a peak constitutes a powerful, metal-distorted guitar line, with the bass and drums providing rhythmic release from what usually starts as a patient, contemplative drone of feedback at the beginning of the song. Simple melodic lines are introduced on a single guitar or solitary violin (many tracks contain a violin or cello, the only other instruments which appear on the album). Mounting crescendos ultimately craft an emotional, explosive finale. What makes this album special though, is how honest each step of the song-journey feels. Where instruments feel contrived or compete for attention in the efforts of most genre peers, on Geneva the musicians react to one another, playing as a group of friends rather than a cast of hired hands. Even the two string players feel carefully integrated into the trio’s conversation.
Russian Circles, while exhibiting a deep connection to members of their own genre, also seem to maintain a dialogue with rock music outside the strictly instrumental mentality. Many of Geneva’s tracks, such as the punchy, driving “Fathom” and the contemplative, space-worthy “Melee”, at times evoke the compositional and melodic sensibilities of Spoon’s Brit Daniel, or Radiohead’s Thom York, respectively. The spatial-sensitive production is another connection to recent indie and electronic music. Guitars and drones are layered thoughtfully, intelligently, and patiently. The mix is balanced and evocative, not content to sit still in the stereo field. Even when trite, metallic guitar tones are used, they seem to transcend their own reputations. Russian Circles want us to see these sounds for what they are, not for how other bands have used them in the past.
The best moments in Geneva are probably situated in its first half. A few of the longer songs in the second section such as “Philos,” which clocks in at over ten minutes, seem to merely reiterate the statements made in the first. Nevertheless, the format ultimately serves Geneva well, letting us fully immerse ourselves in it’s shifting landscape.
