Dethjesta's Almostopster: About Tess - Beautiful

Unlike some people, DJ understood the assignment

When deciding what part of the brief to focus on when making my pick I decided to hone in on the idea of a flawed gem; an album I love but has one or two flaws that would likely always prevent it making my topster. Preamble aside, let the amble commence…

A few years ago a bass playing friend of mine introduced me to a really cool Taiwanese band called Elephant Gym. Off the back of this, I decided to immerse myself in the rich East Asian post-rock scene and this is when I came across About Tess and their debut album, Beautiful.

About Tess consist of two drummers, two bass players and two guitarists and they take a different approach to post-rock, largely forgoing the post-rock staple of dreamy passages for repeating groovy rhythms overlaid with aggressive and often chaotic rock drawing heavily from indie and garage rock. This is an album that wants to be played loud.

The record starts in just this fashion with Violence Freak, a fast paced assault of indie rock underpinned by a catchy rhythm. Spectrum Five mixes up the pace a little, switching between fast and more mellow passages. It includes some great guitar interplay and probably my second favourite track on the album. The third track, Imaginedit, was the single from the album (I guess, since it has music video) - it’s driven by a direct and heavy bass line throughout most of the song with a mellow guitar passage in the middle and a cool rhythm change to play out the song.

My favourite track on the album is Sleep Snatchers which starts with an acoustic intro before moving to a multilayered syncopated blend of the guitars and bass and finishing with another great groovy rock passage. Track 5, I Want to Live All the Remaining Lives with You, is probably the best example of why this album won’t ever get into my topster. While I still really like the song and it does a great job of portraying the song title in music alone, it takes too long to get going. The album closes with Brain Drive-Impulse another great multilayered indie rock inspired song with several tempo shifts.

The thing I love most about this record is the instrument layering, every track has great depth and with some wonderful syncopation and is produced in a way that all the different instruments can be picked out. The only negative I have to say about this album is that some passages stay still a little too long - it’s perhaps a minor gripe for what is otherwise an album I listen to a great deal still today but it’s enough to make this a 9, rather than a 10.