Eyes & No Eyes, self-titled album (review)

Back in 2014, I wrote about a dozen record reviews for a website called Buzz and Howl. It was later hacked and disappeared into the ether. This is one in a series of posts intended to preserve that work, unedited.

 
Eyes & No Eyes, S/T

Post-rock quartet Eyes & No Eyes deliver a sound that is both beautiful and muscular on their self-titled debut. The album doesn’t rely on the cello playing of Becca Mears for its beauty, nor on the rhythm section of Thomas Heather (drums) and Marcus Hamblett (bass) for its muscle--it truly is the interplay between all of these parts, as well as Tristram Bawtree’s guitar, that allows for such effective richness. Bawtree’s singing is pleasant, and there is in all likelihood a good deal going on in the lyrics, but Eyes & No Eyes feel like a music first type of band, with the parts worked out as a group and the vocals added later. The only song here that could be considered troubadour-worthy, and possibly written as a guitar-and-vocal piece before being brought to the band, is the uncharacteristically short “Old Crow.”

The density of high-brow, or perhaps merely obscure, references--song titles taken from J.G. Ballard, the band name itself from a musical by W.S. Gilbert (of Gilbert & Sullivan)--belie the fact that the foursome met at art school in Brighton and originally formed under the flag of improvisation. And yet the music doesn’t collapse under the weight of such pretension, although it does occasionally seem to hold them down. Case in point is the album’s opening, and as such our first impression of Eyes & No Eyes. This is not a record that starts off with a bang. We are treated to almost two full minutes of experimental-band-warm-up futzing before anything like a melody emerges. And then another minute and a half before the beat kicks in. But when it does, it rocks, and you can visualize a crowd at one of their shows held in rapt attention before the tension breaks and everyone begins to sway and move together.

The second track, “Autocrat,” has some fascinating things happening on the drum kit that makes the fact that the band have a Matmos-influenced EP in the works unsurprising. In fact, the drums throughout the record are just as interesting as the rest of the instruments. This is not a band where the string section improvises over an unchanging and steady, repetitive beat, despite the promotional material mentioning their shared love for “driving motorik beats.” The quartet share the load, swapping roles throughout. Sometimes the cello is a drone gluing everything together, and at other times it’s used for strange, noise-based accents. The guitar might throw out some fuzzy lightning strikes, but is more likely to keep things moving forward with a notey loop.

Often young bands with young members don’t fully understand their own personality, and end up describing themselves in terms of things they’ve loved. An artist can never truly know what their own influences are. So when their bio describes Eyes & No Eyes as “walking the fine line between noise and pop drawn up by Sonic Youth and Liars,” I’m tempted to call bullshit. If these are their influences, it’s more in spirit than in sound--no one would accuse them of being a No Wave band, and Bawtree’s singing is prettier than anything you’re likely to find on either of those bands’ records. There is a Sonic similarity to some of my favorite Youth records--that mid-to-late-period of Murray Street, A Thousand Leaves, and Sonic Nurse--with pretty guitar riffs, mid-tempo but driving drums, and very tastefully deployed snatches of noise. But comparisons sell Eyes & No Eyes short. Whether they realize it or not, they’ve already built their own playground, and I can see them hanging around on it for a good while to come.