What’s better than to start off with reviewing a band with a bird’s name? From their last record, these extinct birds have gone from being a duo to a trio, adding Vibraphonist Keaton Snyder to the band. Is this the only difference from their debut or have The Dodos grown a bit in other ways too?
This interesting San Francisco-based indie-folk band makes experimental music with a minimalistic instrumentation comprised of only a guitar and some drums (now also a vibraphone). They released their “debut”, Visiter last year. The quotation marks around the word debut are there because an album called Beware of The Maniacs was out as early as 2006, but then under the name Dodo Bird. Their music then was much slower and minimalistic, while on Visiter they got a lot more experimental and fast-paced. This third album, Time To Die, may or may not seem as a natural way for the band to go.
What initially captivated me about The Dodos when listening to Visiter was that crazy and experimental, yet cheerful and catchy harmony between the guitar and drums and the complex rhytms that were built up. An acoustic guitar and drums rarely generate a very “big” sound, except when the ones playing the instruments are crazy, hyperactive people. The Dodos, however, could play around and make it sound like a band of 4 or 5 people and still seem composed.
On Time To Die, the sound has clearly become a lot less experimental and the mentioned vibraphone isn’t something you’d think about too much, though I’d say it’s a well-chosen addition to the instrumentation, filling in some gaps in the sound. The melodies are much more straight forward and the pressure is evenly distributed throughout a song, where on their previous album, there were a lot of ups and downs, both in volume and pace. To some, this change might be happily welcomed, but even though the melodies are generally smoother and easier to listen to, I think they’ve lost some of what made The Dodos great in the first place.
Sure, it’s far from the worst thing you could listen to, but I’d rather give Visiter another spin.