Album Review : Ten Kens - For Posterity
- Written by Kenneth McMurtrie
Following a couple of personnel changes within their ranks Toronto noiseniks Ten Kens locked themselves away from the world for a number of months to gestate this, For Posterity, their second album, and boy does it sound like it. Loud is definitely the word of the hour here whilst the sense of the frustration born of too much time in each others' company is palpable throughout, so clearly they fed off the self-imposed studio confinement.
Whilst generally maintaining the clear breadth of influences that characterised their self-titled debut there is though less immediacy about the songs on this album and it'll take a few listens to bed itself down in the discerning listener's aural palate. Vocals are more often than not little more than swoops up and down the extent of singer Dan Workman's range it seems and recognisable words are at a premium. Coupled with many lengthy instrumental passages that morph from proto-psych through to hardcore in the space of a single song and you're in possession of one of the more challenging albums of the year to date. Third song, 'Insignificant Other', is a perfect example of this marrying of genres.
That track though signals the point at which the band's vision begins to cohere and from then on, after the aforementioned few listens, it's possible to see what they're aiming for. By the time the halfway-point tune 'Summer Camp' is reached it's reasonable to ask the question of whether the band are in fact the new Pixies, such is the riffage they produce and the range that Workman's pipes can cover. 'Grassmaster' however is more the illegitimate offspring of This Is Hell coupling with Frightened Rabbit.
'Style Wars' takes rather too long to get to wherever it wants to be but things pick up again on 'Hard Sell' and from that point on it's a straight run to the finish. The band have then come up with a distinctly better than average second album and that time spent in enforced proximity to each other has more than paid off.
