Ghost Surveillance

Album Review

Just when you thought it was all over for Chicago as post-rock central, along come bands like Algernon to gun that ostinato-loving, vibraphone-plunking, odd-metered motor once again. With their third album, Algernon not only carries on in the spirit of ‘90s innovators like Tortoise, Isotope 217, et, al, they bring the style into a new era. As with many of the musicians from the Windy City's first wave of post-rock, the members of Algernon are mostly jazz-schooled — very literally in guitarist/leader Dave Miller's case, as he wrote a graduate thesis on the knotty jazz modernism of Lennie Tristano, Warne Marsh, and Lee Konitz. This doesn't mean that they can't handle a rock-oriented groove with the appropriate amount of muscle, but rather that they bring an intimate familiarity with jazz harmonies and time signatures beyond 4/4 to the table. But while this is often a jazzy album, it's far from actual jazz; for one thing, there's little improvisation, most of the tracks being tightly composed, with the guitars of Miller and Toby Summerfield chasing each other through interlocking riffs with color commentary from vibraphonist Katie Wiegman, while the whole thing maintains an insistent, Krautrock-influenced pulse much of the time. And while there are no epic-length Moog fantasias or Tolkien-esque lyrics (no lyrics at all, in fact) on Ghost Surveillance, no post-rock outing would be complete without a bit of prog rock influence, and the 11-minute "Debrief and Defect" does indeed work itself up to an art-rocking peak that brings to mind mid-‘70s King Crimson. Much as their spiritual kin Battles have done, Algernon show that the forward-looking sounds of their ‘90s forebears can still maintain momentum in a changing musical universe. ~ J. Allen, Rovi