Four Tet Pulls Off "Folktronica"

With the winter months closing in around me, it’s with great pleasure that gems like Four-Tet’s latest, There Is Love In You, hit my iTunes account.  The days of riding bikes in jean shorts are long gone and will take another three months to return.  My subway card reads “unlimited” when swiped, and my noise-cancelling headphones may as well be cemented to my ears.  There’s a detachment in the air and the people moving around the city that can’t really be described by anything other organized silence.   

There Is Love In You speaks to this with perfect pitch.  Don’t get me wrong, this is not an ambient noise record, chock full of pretension and warbling, plodding idiocy.  It’s a dance album built for the winter.  There Is Love In You opens with “Angel Echoes,” a track that features staggered vocals that fall and trip over each other in perfect 4/4 while a simplistic and trademark acoustic-sampled drum beat lays the groundwork for the winter coat of the track: the layered synths and plunking metallic chimes that zip you up tight.   

Some of you will recall that this is Four Tet’s first solo effort in five years.  Kieran Hebden (the man behind the laptop/records/synths) puts his chops on the line with every track.  The record seems to do a consistent build/drop, build/drop; never extending into rave or hype music (no thunderous kick drums or Daft Punk level schtick), and never descending into boredom.  Of special note is the nearly 8-minute “This Unfolds,” the stocking cap to my previous analogy.  The song starts as a with a whispering groan, a bassline that almost feels fuzzy and faux enough that is might be more at home on a Smurfs montage.  Soon enough, melancholic guitars whisper their ways in.  The build strains for the next few minutes before taking a downright angelic turn towards heartbreaking and breakbeating synths come to back up the downside.  Sure, your nose might be cold, but those ears are warm and it’s time to dance.  

I do have an issue or two with There Is Love In You.  First, like I said, it never spills over the top.  I’m a guy who listens to Guns N Roses and The Misfits as much as any other music.  I like over the top.  Perhaps it’s part of the album’s charm, but I would’ve liked to see one song explode.  This is a difficult record.  It’s the sort of simple dance or electronica album that is actually ridiculously complex.  Thus, it took me six listens in a variety of situations to finally figure out how it would sound best and how to interpret it.  Let me save you some trouble: on your way home from work with headphones on when you have great dinner plans later on.  It’s buoyant and not at all abrasive.  It’s experimenting in nothing but 4/4 isn’t a detriment, but something to easily tap along with.  Corny labels like “folktronica” be damned, this record is heartwarming, alive, and feels like the bridge between angsty indie kids like myself and Aphex Twin’s immortal “Windowlicker;” and that’s a bridge that, even in this weather, I’ll happily walk across.

The moments in "This Unfolds" when the chimes simply sound like perfectly rhythmic glass shattering all around and jogging beat.

"Pablo's Heart," a 12 second track that does no work for the album whatsoever.