Artist: Gifts from Enola
Label: The Mylene Sheath
Released: 2010
Length: 37:04
Rating: 3.9/5
Let’s be honest, today’s rock scene doesn’t have nearly as much innovation as it used to. That’s exactly why countless movements and genres have popped up trying to bring back the good old days of rock, and one genre that came out of it is hugely popular these days: post-rock. It’s home to a ton of bands with a kind of “alt” status, which they often show off through the band name and the titles of their albums and songs. These bands are also, more often than not, purely instrumental, with little to no vocals. A lot of people read those long song and track titles all wrong, taking them as some kind of pretentiousness on the bands’ part, which is of course not the case. Since these are instrumental outfits, they have to get their ideas across through the titles, because they can’t do it through vocals.
Of course, there are exceptions in this genre too: instrumental bands with ideas that need only a word or two, or in other words, titles of average length. One of those bands is the American post-rockers Gifts from Enola. Their songs do have the occasional singing, but it’s distorted, hard to make out and buried in the background, serving as an instrument. Gifts from Enola are no unknown quantity; their discography already counts three albums. Their latest creation, the self-titled “Gifts from Enola”, is their most ambitious record yet.
It’d be hard for me to claim that “Gifts from Enola” is a groundbreaking release, even though it ranks pretty high in today’s post-rock world. The five tracks, adding up to around 37 minutes, pack in too much repetition and too many already-heard hard rock and even punk bits for it to count as a breakthrough in post-rock. But “Gifts from Enola” is far from a bad album. Opening track “Lionized” sets up a great start for what follows, pulling it off with its fresh rock energy and eerie atmosphere, driven by a complex rhythm section and some very “anti-melodic” riffs. That rhythm section is built on jazzy improvisational technique, which makes the track sound highly experimental while still being listenable enough. If nothing else, credit goes to Gifts from Enola for keeping a common thread running through all this experimental clutter. But the next track, “Dime and Suture”, is more or less boring, with plenty of repetitive heavy riffs. The only thing that spices it up is a kind of “fuzzy” vocal, enriched with radio static. The strong hard rock approach takes a turn halfway through the album, on “Alagoas”. It’s calmer, with a few witty guitar lines and arrangements that team up with the keyboards to build a jazzy landscape. The post-rock approach is still obvious, which makes “Alagoas” feel like a kind of transitional track. “Grime and Glass”, the herald of the ending, kicks off, to the listeners’ surprise, in punk fashion – with a repetitive, distorted guitar riff that’s neither complicated nor longer than two chords. Still, despite the weak start, the band pulls out a few aces and the track grows into an unusual rhythmic melody with quite a few progressive elements. The band’s experimental streak doesn’t let us down this time either. As a closing act, Gifts from Enola give us “Rearview”. They don’t actually look back in it, which is what a rearview mirror is for, but they stay on the same road they were already on. Once again there’s too much repetition, and the track runs over seven minutes. It does later serve up an extremely pleasant melody, but there are too few moments like that.
That’s also the main takeaway about the album. “Gifts from Enola” offers too little variety for such a short running time, 37 minutes. Only five tracks get to speak in those minutes, so the differences from track to track should be all the more obvious. But there’s clearly too much repetition. Still, it’s hard to write it off as a bad album, because it isn’t. These guys have loads of quality, both in composition and in chops. The album has parts where it truly “rips”, where no prejudice about post-rock music can stop it and where it wrecks every known rock norm. But most of the time the listener only catches a quick glimpse of such a moment before it vanishes and the music slides back into some very good, if still experimental, tinkering. All in all, “Gifts from Enola” offers enough quality musical traits to win over all the modern-minded rock fans out there.
Lineup
Andrew Barnes – guitars
Nathaniel Dominy – bass guitar
CJ DeLuca – guitar
Jud Mason – drums
Production
Gifts from Enola
Tracklist
1. Lionize (8:23)
2. Dime and Suture (6:09)
3. Alogas (7:37)
4. Grime and Glass (7:39)
5. Rearview (7:24)
