Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2010 > November > 11 > Entry
CD review: The Black and White Years ‘Patterns’
“If you want to dance I could help you out … If you want to dance I will dance I’ll give that a try ” intones masterfully showy Black and White Years front man Scott Butler on the title track off “Patterns,” over a choir of synthesizers and a surgery-precise beat. Butler tells no falsehoods — “Patterns,” the full-length follow-up to the quartet’s Jerry Harrison-produced debut, is rich with interweaving dance grooves and excursions into electronica. It’s almost as though the Black and White Years set out to make a better Ghostland Observatory record than Ghostland Observatory. Just examine the club-friendly thump of “Animal Behaviors” as evidence.
So singular is its sound that “Patterns,” at 45 minutes, veers into monotony at times — it could use a bit of the variety that characterized the band’s self-titled first album. But even when “Patterns” drags, it always has the benefit of Butler’s songwriting. In a way that belies the shallow standards of the lion’s share of dance rock, it’s sharp and thoughtful and sometimes self-deprecating, as on the endearingly cautious optimism of “Everything’s Eventual” (“What’s this? A smile? Goodness it must have been a while.”) Chuck in the band’s fiendish tightness and the clean production of Butler, band mate Landon Thompson and Austin recorder extraordinaire Erik Wofford and you’ve got an almost insolently funky record.
Follow Austin Music Source on Facebook and Twitter.
Permalink | | Categories: Reviews
