It may seem hypocritical of me to praise Tomahawk for the very same thing I panned Kamikaze Test Pilots for only the other day. But that’s not just the nature of music reviewers – yeah, we’re fickle – but the nature of music. There are, I always maintain, two kinds of music: good and bad. It’s not about genre, it’s about where you take it. And this is perhaps even more true when it comes to bands who build their sound around stylistic hybridity. Tomahawk do hybridity and take it to the nth degree, and it doesn’t feel remotely forced: it just flows. There’s a hell of a lot bouncing about here, and it’s invariably off the wall and in all directions.
Variety is definitely the spice of life where Tomahawk are concerned, and ‘Oddfellows’ is very much the sum of its parts, in the best possible sense: the weirdness of Mr Bungle, the classic catchy elements of Faith No More with the gritty overtones of The Jesus Lizard, the grunt of Melvins and the off-kilter tangential rhythmic complexities of Battles. Yet at the same time, ‘Oddfellows’ demonstrates a remarkable sense of focus and cohesion. This intuitive blend of seemingly incongruous elements is immediately demonstrated on the title track, which shakes up cocktail led by a metal-edged chug with a dirty swagger. And so Tomahawk set out their stall for the latest instalment in their predictably unpredictable journey.
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Noirish elements filter through the atmospheric ‘I.O.U.’ ‘Stone Letter’ is as hooky as hell, with a killer chorus while retaining a driving edge. Dave Grohl would kill for a tune like it. ‘Rise Up Dirty Waters’ is positively schizophrenic – jazzy, swinging, explosive, part punk, part FNM. The yawning guitar of ‘The Quiet Few’ which is anything but as is builds to a frenetic blizzard of manic noise. ‘I Can Almost See Them’ takes Tomahawk into Thaw-era Foetus territory, with brooding dramatics and a dash of sleaze. The low-slung sleaze also filters through the rock ‘n’ roll swagger of ‘Choke Neck’ It’s a serious contrast to the heads-down, no messing no-wave blast of ‘South Paw’.
You’ll have probably surmised by now that ‘Oddfellows’ brings it all to the table. But rather than simply work to their strengths in an obvious way, they’ve pushed their experimentalism in all directions, while harnessing it and channelling it to produce an album that feels like an album – and that, ultimately, is Tomahawk’s real strength and what makes ‘Oddfellows’ an album that keeps on giving up new rewards.
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