Thee More Shallows' offbeat indie rock finds a cozy home in Anticon Records. The San Francisco-based label is known for embracing tweaked hip hop and ambient soundscapes. Here its roster expands to include
Book of Bad Breaks — pop dressed in disorienting textures. The opening track, "D. Shallow," is a 40-second fragment of a folk song. It could almost pass for a Mountain Goats or Smog number, were it not for all the chaos. From distorted clatter to wayward bits of conversation and coughing, TMS kick off with claustrophobia, driving home the creepy noir quality in bandleader Dee Kesler's lyrics. In the album's most hypnotic highlight, "Eagle Rock," Kesler warns, "If you survive to be a daddy, this'll be a lullaby, too." The drums add a hip-hop swagger to the haunting psychedelia before the singer switches to a creepy whistling solo. "Dutch Fist" is even eerier, its verses recalling the nightmarish laptop of Add (N) to X as Kesler compares modern finance to torture techniques of a bygone era. "Fast forward 200 years," he sighs. "The Dutch fist has adjusted its grip/ The bank branch fat managers bosses are using credit like they used to use a whip." As the beats kick in like ?uestlove crashing a Grandaddy session, TMS offer just one of many unexpected detours on a ride that rarely moves in the expected direction.
— Ed Masley
