Picastro - You

I've never heard anything by Picastro until now. I can't comment on how they've matured (if at all) or how this record compares to that one. What I can say is that You is a tough listen. It's not melodic. In fact, it's nearly atonal. I'm a big fan of math rock where percussion and time signatures take the day. Mathiness is bedfellows with atonality nine times out of ten, but you can tap it out on your dashboard. Here, You shares none of that fist pumping, dash slapping machismo. Picastro mines slowcore territory which really accentuates the lack of melody.
The instrumentation is interesting, but I'm not convinced it's anything but. The cello slips and slides into notes. If it were just touching on accidentals, I might not feel my ears are being cheese grated. As it is, on the worse offenders it sounds like 1950s sound effects for Tom & Jerry when Tom slips on the banana peel. The percussion sounds like what you'd expect if you got into your bathtub and hammered away on the pipes with a knife and a fork. Who knows? Maybe that's how it went down in the studio. Don't forget to put your shower cap on.
I haven't been listening to the tracks as individual musical pieces. I've been listening to the album, mostly in the car, all the way through as a complete work. Maybe these tracks would be great in shuffle mode in iTunes, but as a body of songs, I can't recommend them. One song slips into the next, and I can't differentiate between them. None of them stand out. This is expected with post-rock. No verse-chorus-verse song structure here.
I cued up track one on the drive home today, and by the time I was in the driveway the album was done. My commute is under 30 minutes. There are ten tracks on You, but half of them clock in under three minutes. "Baron in the Trees" is an outlier at seven and a half minutes. I've said it before that most albums over 35 minutes aren't worth listening to and almost all the best albums are under. You is under, and I am still bored (or annoyed) half way through. There's nothing to hang your hat on, no lyric that sticks out, no refrain that's hummable.

iTunes tells me I give this album two stars.

Posted with Blogsy