ALBUM REVIEW: O Soundtrack My Heart
- Posted on July 30, 2008 10:47 AM
- 0 comments
Pivot
O Soundtrack My Heart
Review By Max Hogg
I’ve only starting hearing rumbles about Pivot in the part few months, but hearing that they had been signed to Warp records was enough to spark my interest in this post-rock outfit from Australia. Warp is one of those labels where everything they release is worth experimenting with in case it turns out to be a masterpiece (Autechre’s Quaristice or Boards of Canada’s Music…), but quite of a bit of it is ultimately disappointing (Battles’ Mirrored springs to mind).
So to O Soundtrack My Heart. I’ve got to admit that the title itself put me off a bit. I think it’s the missing ‘h’. Perhaps the title is in some way ironic and I just don’t get the joke (or I’m just a grammatical fascist). Never mind – it certainly isn’t the worst album title in the world.
On a first listen the recent single ‘In the Blood’ immediately stands out. Its rolling electro filthiness sets a good tone for what’s to come. The title track is closer to math rock and very enjoyable it is too. The trio continue in this vein for ‘Sing, You Sinners’ whose guitar riff sounds remarkably like that of a track from the up-and-coming London math rockers YouMeTheSwitch, although not quite as good.
The problem is the record never really seems to develop very far after these three standout tracks. Tracks like ‘Sweet Memory’ and ‘Epsilon’ are certainly enjoyable enough but they tend to sound a bit thin, especially after a few more listens. Snapping at the heels of kings of the experimental/post-rock genre such as Sigur Ros, Archive or Low, Pivot have quite a fight on their hands to carve out a niche. Especially as their instrumental approach is notoriously difficult to translate convincingly from the stage onto a record.
Perhaps this is at the heart of it. I’ve heard on the grapevine that Pivot are renowned over in Oz for putting on a damn good live show. Where tracks like ‘Love Like I’ fail to excite through the headphones, I can well imagine a bit of good onstage craftsmanship would get a crowd going wild.
Pivot cite an impressive list of influences, from Jean Michel Jarre through Aphex Twin to the delights of Ricardo Villalobos and Arcade Fire. For the moment, I think I’ll pin my hopes on the reference to the latter – if Pivot’s live shows are even half as good as Arcade Fire’s then their album launch on 20th August will be unmissable.
Just as I’m confident that I’ve formed a settled opinion on O Soundtrack My Heart, putting it to one side and booking tickets for the album launch instead, the Pike Brothers and Dave Miller throw ‘Nothing Hurts Machine’ back at me. For me this is unquestionably the best track of the album, and a real surprise after a few slightly meandering tracks before it. Back to the math rock of earlier tracks, it stutters and rolls about with all the raucous weight that much of the rest of the album sadly lacks.
So the verdict? Download ‘Nothing Hurts Machine’, ‘Sing, You Sinners’, ‘O Soundtrack My Heart’ and ‘In The Blood’. That should be enough to get your teeth into before rocking out to them at the Roundhouse Studies on 20th August. It sounds like the live scene is where the money is for musicians these days – in this light Pivot may well have a bright future ahead of them.
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