Black Tambourine - Complete Recordings (1999)
Artist: Black Tambourine
Author: Sarah
Date: 10/15/2024
Listen: Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify
One of the most hypocritical things about me is that it annoys me when current Slumberland bands sound like carbon copies of their influences without adding something new, and yet I love Black Tambourine. Black Tambourine is by no means an original band (the working titles for their songs were the names of the bands they were copying in them!), but they are incredibly good at what they do. Sort of like a 90s version of the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, I guess.
One of the most striking things about this album to me is the fact that all the elements are equally prominent in their songs. Usually, I tend to feel like noise pop bands put all their attention into getting the right noisy guitar sound, and maybe on getting good vocals, but then everything else is just meant to fade into the background. But Black Tambourine, maybe as a result of everyone trading off instruments, allows the basslines and even the drumming to be significant to the construction of the songs, or even actually memorable! Like, can you imagine "Throw Aggi off the Bridge" without that bassline or the frantic drumming just before the guitar comes in, for example?
Of course, it's a noise pop album, so here's the obligatory paragraph about how good and noisy the guitar is. Something I like a lot about it is how they're willing and able to switch it spontaneously from jangly to noisy on a whim. You can hear this best in the twee-est songs, "Drown" and "We Can't Be Friends", but there's also a similar dynamic in my personal favorite, "Black Car", though there it sounds to me more like they're using a jangly guitar and a feedback-laden guitar at the same time.
For pure noise appeal, they still can't quite match Psychocandy, but they make up for it by actually being able to make other types of sounds when they play. There's the crushingly loud "For Ex-Lovers Only", the Lush-wannabe shimmering of "Pack You Up", or even the cartoon car chase feel of "I Was Wrong". I guess that's actually why it doesn't bother me as much that they're a pretty derivative band; usually a derivative band picks someone to copy and sticks with it, but Black Tambourine is changing the band they're copying with every song. But also, if we're being honest, they're usually better than the songs they were copying.
If you're here to read about their 2009 self-titled compilation, all of the above still holds true. In addition to that, you will also get two demo recordings (the demo version of "Throw Aggi off the Bridge" makes the original version look tame) and a few songs they reunited to record. Of these, I like "Heartbeat" (a Buddy Holly cover) and "Lazy Heart" well enough, but don't particularly care for the others. Honestly, when I'm listening to Black Tambourine, I'm usually listening to Complete Recordings and the Aggi demo and skipping the rest of the newly added tracks.