“Caught in time, moving backwards.“
Post rock – a genre that was meant to be a reinvention of the wheel – quickly turned into a rote affair. Even though its originators significantly expanded the sound palette a rock band could draw from, the effect was to carve a niche beneath the interest of more casual listeners. Worse still, those with the appetite to trawl this trench are a tough crowd to please, ready to roll their eyes at the tropes that brought them into the fold. It’s not helped by being a ‘live’ genre through and through, but mobilising armchair connoisseurs into boxy venues is challenging. It’s no surprise that many bands that could be described as ‘post rock’ shirk it. Outlander are among these ranks thanks to being largely instrumentally focused rockers whose slow music is wrought from walls of sound. Despite the odds, Outlander rise far beyond the term through incredibly careful songwriting and soundscaping. Acts of Harm is their new record, and first LP in five years, a sublime release that bringing them back to action.
Acts of Harm has been compiled over three recording sessions spanning two years – “New Motive Power” has been knocking around in single format for a long time. This brings an emphasis to Outlander’s approach that is present throughout the whole record: patience. A minimalist approach to writing their chord sequences and repetitions, sometimes only adjusting the force of their three guitars or steady drums, works incredibly well here. If any other band adopted the pace and repetition of Outlander, it wouldn’t go down well, but Acts of Harm will earn your respect. Less is more, even when you have twenty pedals.
“Bound” begins the record in a gentle way with just one guitar strumming and airy vocals. The chords hold steady like a morning fog, both beckoning and foreboding. The emotion won’t hit you with its weight to begin with, but as the band repeats these slow sequences, hardly resolving, it becomes clear that they mean to leave an impression. The closing three minutes are intense: the chord sequence is doubled down as one guitar holds a drone. The drums navigate the band back to earth with careful playing – Jack Davis’ performance must be commended as he underpins the subtlety of Acts of Harm. One never feels like he played any drum or cymbal too hard, or over-did any rudiment or fill.
As “Bound” closes on a sharp spike of noise, “Want No More” changes tack with the record’s most memorable riff. Functioning as a classic shoegaze track to begin with, it changes form many times across its eight minutes, including some of the heaviest. The mix of the three guitars gives the listener plenty to enjoy, including chime-y chords, traded counter-play lines, and the inevitable walls of sound. “II: Nuclear” is an instrumental run-on addendum to “Want No More”, giving the band even more space to settle from the preceding heights of noise. “Orbit” follows, another short instrumental, but stands on its own as a lovely closer to side one. With just two riffs and all of the tranquillity and volume that Outlander have to offer, “Orbit” is the go-to track for a bite-sized Outlander experience.
“New Motive Power” strikes at the start of side two with a sharp riff, dogmatically repeating as the rest of the band weaves a shoegaze ballad over it. The track’s emotional ambiguity is welcome as it paves the way for the record’s final stretch, particularly the massive “Lye Waste”. Eager to make use of every one of its eleven minutes, the band starts with whisper vocals and ride cymbals. After a five minute piece of aching slowcore, the microphones are switched off and the band turns inwards. Micro-adjustments to the rudiments eventually lead to the album’s heaviest moment: just two chords, slammed down with incredible force, like Sisyphus dropping his stone then screaming to the heavens. What could have been an overwrought conclusion is instead another gentle ending: three and a half minutes of the band holding you in an aftermath. Closing out instrumentally with acoustic guitars, “II: Habituation” gives a quiet emotional release; the silver lining to Acts of Harm’s darkness.
What’s really next-level about Acts of Harm is what it holds back. Each build up could have been the one that left nothing behind, where every distortion pedal was cranked to maximum and the last cymbal was destroyed. The weight of a stayed hand is passed on to the listener, wrapping you into a cocoon. It’s stunning to see how far the band has come in their eight years. Going back to their debut releases (Take Turns and Downtime) shows a certain promise, but they had not yet acquired the subtlety that The Valium Machine and the present record succeed with. We can only hope that the next record is not five years away, but perhaps we should learn something from Outlander’s patience.
9/10
Acts of Harm releases on the 28th June through Church Road Records and can be pre-ordered here.