Pitchfork

Here on their second full length, San Francisco's Tussle's M.O. hasn't changed, despite some personnel shifts. They're still an instrumental outfit-- two drummers, bass, electronics-- who would love nothing more than to be headlining Dancetaria in 1982, except maybe playing a festival in Munich in 1972. At their best, they create deep-in-the-pocket grooves that penetrate with catchy basslines and terrific drumming, all captured with beautiful fidelity. But if you listen at the wrong time, they can strike you as a rhythm section in search of a song-- half of a newly unearthed Average White Band multi-track recording. Their tracks can be a bit like looking at a two-dimensional representation of a cube, as these two parallel realities, both equally valid, keep flipping back and forth in your perception.

No question, though, that Telescope Mind improves on Tussle's debut, Kling Klang. It's both less dubby and more spacious; the air that was clouded with reverb on the debut having been honed into a clear, sharp-edged rhythm instrument. It's all in the simplicity of a song like "Warning", which begins with a completely naked six-note bass refrain-- you can almost hear the grips of the players' fingerprints sliding across the wound string-- that sounds like it's live in your room even over computer speakers. That the "melody" driving the song is just three notes a whole step apart repeating over and over again on a keyboard doesn't diminish its sheer hookiness.

The following "Second Guessing" is even better, and provides further evidence as to why the sound of this thing-- props to engineer Quinn Luke and mastering engineer Kit Clayton-- is so central to its appeal. It begins with a quick bass ostinato, a bass drum, and a single crash cymbal that hits and remains audible for the length of its fade, a full five seconds of sizzle that allows you to picture the room the track was recorded in and imagine the movement happening around the instruments. The sound quality is as essential to the impact here as it is with any production by the DFA.

The serious syncopation and polyrhythms on "Elephants" are another highlight, and the closing "Pow!" brings in Sal Principato and Dennis Young from Liquid Liquid to jam for a cross-generational match up of the downtown 1980s O.G.s and their talented acolytes. But the title of this track hints at a potential problem, bringing to mind the Beastie Boys instrumental of the same name from Check Your Head and later collected on The In Sound From Way Out. Like those Beastie Boys interludes, Tussle can come across as too steeped in history, concerned only to create some new rare grooves, and playing in a style that doesn't allow them to add anything new without becoming something else. Then again, if this year's ESG album sounded half as good as this, I would have been thrilled.