This is a tough one. After all, Wilco are one of this writer’s favourite bands and a group who have barely put a foot wrong over the past decade, and their drummer GLENN KOTCHE – since coming on board prior to the ground-breaking “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” – has played a big part in propelling them forward with his dextrous and sometimes unorthodox percussive skills.
So it’s always hard to be critical of a musician whose talents as a crucial team player are apparently second-to-none. But sadly, when striking out on his own with his third solo album “Mobile” (his first on a major label, to boot), Glenn Kotche struggles to hold the listener’s attention with a series of tracks which are certainly superior in the strictly virtuosic sense, but lacking in terms of emotional – and frankly – structural quality.
Grudgingly, I suppose I’d have to confess the warning signs were there beforehand. After all, Kotche is also one-third of Alt.rock Wilco spin-off project Loose Fur (with Jeff Tweedy and Jim O’Rourke) and – more worryingly – experimental jazz duo On Fillmore. Scarily, it’s this latter (as well as the likes of Eno, Steve Reich and The Creatures) who seem to have influenced the soundscapes which make up “Mobile”s 40-minute duration.
To be fair, I hadn’t expected anything remotely Americana-flavoured here, or even anything that you could obviously classify simply as a ‘song’ per se, but whatever reserves of goodwill I’d been harbouring were put to the test by tracks like semi-ambient kalimba, vibraphone and marimba mini-symphony that is “Mobile Parts 1 &2” or the skittery, Aphex Twin-style junglist beats of “Projections Of (What) Might”.
Indeed, it remains largely as impenetrable as it unravels. “Monkey Chant” opens with a brief burst of “Moby Dick”-style thunder, but this soon abates to let in Japanese-style pattering, timpani and what sounds like piano strings creaking. Mystifying seems to be the most apt adjective, as indeed it does for the hi-hat, triangle and chime bursts of “Reductions Or Imitations” and the blippy backwards masking and buzzy, analogous sirocco of “Individual Trains.”
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Thankfully, it’s not all redundant, and there is certainly pleasure to be derived from the “Yankee Hotel…” –style beats of “Mobile Part 3”, where an already intriguing mood piece is further accentuated by Holger Czukay-style ambience from piano and synth. It has a fine, OST-style presence, as does the fragile marimba symphony of the closing “Fantasy On A Shona Theme” which succeeds best for this writer simply by being the least cluttered thing here by a good country mile. It’s only a shame there wasn’t more in this vein.
Of course, “Mobile” does nothing to alter my high opinion of Glenn Kotche as a key member of Wilco, and snatches of the album showcase how rhythmically talented he is in a whole range of percussive settings. Sadly, though, while I’d hate to deny him his experimental freedom, his avant-rock workouts here provide little of more than passing interest in the long run. Pity.
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