Post-rock
In these days of gastronomic excess, there comes a moment when you will fancy a good salad, or some well-cooked vegetables. And that is exactly what the Germans Small Strides offer us on their debut album. A fine, neat, distinguished and refined piece of work.
The members are Leo Bernard (vocals and keyboards), Manuel Tesch (guitar and backing vocals), Sven Heine (bass) and Malin Weber (drums). There is surely room for improvement, since there is almost always a maturing process as a band gains experience. And we hope that is exactly what happens, since there is clearly an attractive, exciting potential here.
We open the album with “Roads”, with a soft, relaxed atmosphere of keyboards and reversed effects. It is the prelude to the piano’s entrance, laying out the rhythmic motif that the drums, and then the rest of the band, will join. The vocals flow without any harshness, taking on a special colour in the backing vocals that give it good range. The hazy interlude leads us to an in-crescendo ending, where restrained guitars carry us to the conclusion.
More upbeat but still with a certain nostalgia, we get “Fake Doors”, where a bassline that takes on a fair share of the spotlight stands out. Lovely acoustic guitars and a drum ostinato keep the chorus lively, even though the voice ends up a bit flatter than you would expect. And, almost like a coda to the previous track, we link into “Exits”, where the rhythmic foundation, complemented by a responsive bass, supports a guitar solo. The slowed-down ending is quite curious.
Much more intimate is the almost minimalist introduction to “Hard to Know”, built on piano and voice with the occasional sound-effect detail. The development once again offers calm melodies with subtle, careful arrangements, with lovely drum work standing out. The surprise arrives in the second half of the track, where we find much more rock-oriented ideas backing a long guitar solo with an interesting chord progression.
And almost without a break, a delicate piano gives us a short piece they call “Interlude”, which, as its title suggests, acts as a hinge connecting us to “Why We Are”. At an unhurried tempo, the acoustic guitar plays out arpeggios while a digital drum machine keeps an original rhythm. This foundation lets the voice take the foreground, and the simple but very effective backing vocals in the chorus bring pleasant sensations. A short classical-guitar solo transports us back to the vocal section, where the rest of the instruments join in, with excellent judgement, eventually lending the track a certain post-rock feel. Beneath the appearance of a simple composition lies a splendid musical richness in this beautiful track.
“The Shore”, on the other hand, travels more indie paths, quality pop territory. The song’s good production work stops it from ending up entirely forgettable, and here it actually helps elevate the track to the status of a solid filler piece. Plus, it was about time for a slightly livelier track. And, returning to more intimate territory, at a slow tempo we get “Your Arms”. A kind of melancholic ballad where the elegant keyboard work and chorus backing vocals, together with the use of a minor key, lend the composition a sorrowful landscape.
A touch more forceful is “Sleep”, where the melody kicked off by the guitar makes way for a somewhat watered-down voice tasked with carrying the track’s weight. It does not help that there is over-compression on the drums, muddying up a track that could have worked better. All told, it ends up a bit of a mess and turns rather cheesy.
We find more or less the same problems on “Gone”, where they should have avoided centring the composition on the voice, since it ends up delivering overly standard melodic lines. In short: one of these two tracks could have been cut, since there is no real justification for it either — not even to hit some minimum runtime, beyond the 30 or 35 minutes needed for a proper album.
Luckily, on the instrumental “Into Grey” they transport us to passages close to post-rock, this time steering clear of all the clichés that can sometimes make your hair stand on end. Even when they bring in a mandolin-like guitar, it sits at just the right level of presence. Progressively (it’s what prog does), they lead us through ambient territory to a powerful close, with authoritative bass and drums and a guitar giving a fantastic response.
Closing out 2023 with a debut of this level and singularity is remarkable. Even more so in a year that has had so much quality music.
Writer: David Sàez