Parlour Gets Complicated

I'm not really sure who the heck Parlour are but it's the first time in eight years that they've released a record and in all honesty it seems as though they are way over due. Sounding something like a band who bought to many jazz records and got them mixed in with their Tortoise albums, Parlour create instrumental atmospherics that stand out like a pimply faced geek in a sea of football players. With songs that seem to go on forever and a sense of melody Parlour tend to rock more than their contemporaries and choose to sound like they threw their vocalist off the side of a bridge than anythng else.

Post rock tends to be one of two ways, overly atmospheric or so bordering on prog-rock that there they make Can seem like a top-40 band. Parlour really don't fit into either category choosing instead to throw both parameters together and sandwich them between jazz and rock and roll influences. The resulting sounds, which are all over their record Simulcrenfield, is completely random, jittery, melodic, jazzy, and pretty incredible. Not really sounding like a long lost soundtrack record but rather, a series of intense improvisations which seem to wander around aimlessly finding riffs in strange places, Simulcrenfield is technically brilliant while not being overly complex. With horns, guitars, synths and drums, Parlour manage to whip themselves into some sort of post-jazz-rock frenzy that's easy on the ears but intricate to the brain.

While several songs tend to overlap and almost seem like the continuation of the last one, Simulcrenfield never gets overly dull or lost in its instrumentation. While I'm not generally a fan of overly pretentious post rock, Parlour do a fantastic job of keeping things interesting for everyone and they never allow your brain to stray too far from the melodies they churn out. Intriguing, technical, and atmospheric, Simulcrenfield is a record that's ideal background music for algebra, calculus, architecture or physics. Parlour has created the sound of science and Simulcrenfield is one experiment you’ll never hope to conclude.