Customer Reviews

The Way Out

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"The Way Out" is another solid outing and incremental step forward for the fun, experimental duo The Books.

Built around found audio snippets of adults and children, "The Way Out" playfully dissects these anonymous guests' words, recontextualizing them to sometimes humorous, sometimes profound effect. And as always the music itself is interesting and provocative. These are skilled musicians, eschewing typical arrangements, signatures, and beats for explorations of texture and rhythm.

Highlights on the album for me include: "A Cold Freezin' Night" - a frenetic, bass-and-rhythm-driven soundtrack to the murderous threats of a group of children; "Beautiful People," a harmonious chant-like mathematical dream (I'm not sure I understand the subject matter, but what a trippy song!); and "All You Need is a Wall," which finds the group coming close to putting together a conventionally structured folk song (and they can sing!).

For those who know The Books, there's lots to love and enjoy about this album. It will feel familiar from the start in that its a natural, albeit slight, evolution (and then, only really in that sense that they use their own voices a bit more and push into some heretofore unexplored genres).

For those new to The Books, this album is as good a jumping off point as any. And although fans often say "The Books" and "experimental" in the same breath, don't be scared by the label. Yes, its different cup of tea, but its a lovely sip nonetheless.

The Books have certainly progressed in the interim between albums. These songs match their "found" sounds with instrumentation in new ways, but they still retain the same magic of their first two albums.

While this is a great album to add to your collection, I would disagree with the review that recommends this as a first album to get from The Books. For your first albums I would suggest "The Lemon of Pink" and then "Thought for Food". Both superlative. Head to their main site "the books music [dot] com" to hear full previews.

Also, don't forget The Books' collaboration with Prefuse 73 -- "Prefuse 73 Reads The Books" Talk about catching lightning in a bottle - it is a perfect alloy of their styles.

BTW, if you have a chance to see The Books live, it is an event not to be missed. They synch'd a videos with their songs and added new layers of rhythm to some of their best songs.

Beyond the odd movie and sound samples, The Books have created high quality electronic/collage music on their previous three albums. Their effective use of cello, guitar, and chopped up audio covered an aspect of their music that was subtle to the point that it was easy to overlook unless someone pointed it out -- their lack of drum programming. Nick Zammuto's history with chopping samples to create pseudo-percussion helped put the previous The Books albums in a unique niche.

By far the introduction of traditional drums is the biggest change in The Way Out, and sadly it shows that they don't have experience doing drum programming (they have admitted as such in interviews). Two tracks include a basic house beat (c'mon guys) and others include what sounds like General MIDI drums. One other aspect that's sorely missing is the great sense of space, or openness, prevalent on previous albums, replaced instead with what seems to pass muster as simple singer/songwriter tracks. Look, I understand that musicians like expanding their horizons and doing new things, but another aspect of good musicianship is recognizing when you're making a dud.

There are some decent tracks on the album, and overall the album is cohesive, but cohesively mediocre. Despite the long hiatus, I'm not very excited about this album. Oh well.

Perfect new The Books album. They are getting even better at what they are doing. It's all the things that can be loved about The Books, but beefier and more well fed.

I do like experimental music, but this is just extremely unpleasant to listen to. It is so chopped up, with in some cases very repetitive samples (where one clip will repeat over and over within one song, like a person's voice or a snip of that) that it really almost sounds like something is defective. I should say that there are definitely some songs that are worse than others, and there are a few that are listenable, but the previews make it hard to judge because something that sounds ok for 30 sec can be highly irritating for 2 to 5 minutes. I've listened to the 2 albums from the books that I purchased, this one (The Way Out) and the Lemon of Pink, 2 times so far, and my impression hasn't changed. I'm quite disappointed. Lesson to learn: don't buy 2 albums from a band that you don't know well without listening to at least 1 or a couple of songs first. Just listening to the song "I am who I am" and it is really just noise. One last note is that I think definitely people might find this interesting, but I don't think it is something that would be listened to often. I have a couple of long trips coming up, I will keep listening and I'll update this review if I come around.

I have all The Books music, but that doesn't mean I know much about them. The music almost defies description or explanation - you just have to listen to it. Is it music meant to make you think or "to tease you out of thought"? Is it the musical equivalent of koan? I have my suspicions, but I don't know for sure. I don't know whether the found sounds they use are meant to be ironic or provocative. Both? Are we supposed to think about them or simply let them wash over us like waves? In the end, I think, each person has to make up their own mind. I can say, however, that I keep listening, because I never know where they are going, where they will take me. And I do want to find out. I don't know whether this is the way out, or the way in, or when and if we ever get there. Whatever. It is a trip worth the price of admission.

The music appears to be a home made project of the artists, so I assume they had a hands on approach to the cover art as well. I've been around long enough to notice an obvious rip off of the first Living Bible paraphrase that came out on the heels of the hippie age in the early 1970's called The Way:THE WAY: The Living Bible (Illustrated) Before it became known as Christianity the teaching of Jesus was simply known as The Way. I don't know what to make of that. I suppose The Books have "sampled" the title and artwork of The Way as they have sampled all the other recordings and incorporated them into their music and made them their own - but to what end? Also, as the reader may know, the "Bible" itself merely means the "Book." People of faith of any stripe are know as "people of the Book." The Book vs. The Books, The Way vs. The Way Out. Is there a message for us to discern here? Must we decide? Maybe we should just do as the Books do and make of it what we will.