Pitchfork

Originally, Pit er Pat weren't even supposed to be a band. They were supposed to back a singer-songwriter who flaked on them. But instead of packing it in, they wound up writing their first songs together in order to honor a commitment to a gig already booked. Two EPs and two albums later, the accidental band is still making very deliberate music, and though it's not entirely even, Pyramids is their most accomplished record to date.

They've reconnected with producer John McEntire of Tortoise, who also helmed the 3D Message EP earlier this year, and you can feel his hand in the album's rough yet futuristic texture. The buzzy electric piano that dominates the musical conversation is a particular Chicago post-rock hallmark and locates the record geographically as easily as a picture of the John Hancock. While the sound invites, the songs don't, however, and the vocal melodies are frequently awkward, contorted to fit the weird rhythms or mirror the keyboard parts.

"Time Monster" is a perfect example, as the underlying groove, if it can be called that, sputters along in a triple meter while keyboardist Fay Davis-Jeffers stretches her fragile voice around the words "Time doesn't care/ Makes no decisions/ They have already been made." Syllables are randomly elongated to fill the melodic space and the result is unmemorable and uncomfortable. The time monster's cousin "Brain Monster" opens the album feeling similarly uncontoured, but drummer Butchy Fuego (a member of Neutral Milk Hotel ages ago) and Davis-Jeffers create a damaged texture that redeems the forced vocal by nearly overwhelming it. The song pulls itself into an elegant rhythm and ultimately grows downright strident, offering a quick look at the wonders the trio can work with a simple dynamic concept.

The album finishes with its strongest song, "Moon Angel", where the crisp drums work off of Davis-Jeffers' insistent electric piano ostinato. Bassist Rob Doran (Alkaline Trio) adds some interesting textural work in the intro, and the vocal melody, though still a bit of a meander, is at least loose enough not be distracting. The title track is the most interesting rhythmic experiment, pairing a fairly basic drum part with electronics and loops, but McEntire's production fails here, burying the vocals too deeply and letting sound effects and arrhythmic fuzz bass squelch the song's momentum. As such, it's bested by the far simpler "Solstice", which slides comfortably into a groove plenty of jazz-funk bands from the 70s would've been plenty happy with.

The band is so close to having something special that it's disappointing to come away from the album with so little. Pit er Pat clearly have the instrumental chops to play whatever they want, but compositionally, they haven't broken out of a box where every vocal phrase starts on the first beat and the lyrics scan as though written with little consideration to how they'll be sung. They've already exhibited growth as a band, but they still have some growing left before they'll be fully formed.