The Necks
★★★★
Travel
NORTHERN SPY. CD/DL/LP
Album #19: four stunning jams capture the start of four practices. What’s left to rehearse, really?
Atomise the simmering improvisations of brilliant Australian trio The Necks, as many have previously done, and their instrumental sagas crumble into hillocks of pretty junk – crystalline piano snippets, stunted drum lines, and resonant upright rumbles, all strange puzzle pieces with no partners. Travel, the nonpareil group’s best record in exactly a decade, again captures their uncanny ability to amass and arrange these seemingly inconsequential bits into staggering mountains, each musical stone situated for maximum intrigue. As The Necks go, these four umpteen-minute pieces are very distinct, from the locked-groove clave of acoustic opener Signal to the acid-organ roar of mighty closer Bloodstream. In spellbinding fashion, they all try to solve one question: how awesome, overwhelming, and immersive can a tiny ensemble get through the repetition of a few little pieces? As they glide through the rumble of Forming, the only half-apt answer from this Total Gestalt Music seems to be ‘endlessly’. Grayson Haver Currin