Happy birthday, Maggie.

Tortoise, TNT

I had just become acquainted with Tortoise when I learned they were releasing a new album. On the day it was released I went with Jen, who had introduced me to Tortoise and the Sea & Cake, to the Exclusive Company to purchase it. It was Tuesday, March 10, 1998. This being northern Wisconsin, it was still basically winter, though there wasn�t a great deal of snow left on the ground, and it was a sunny afternoon. We sat in my car on the way back and one of us cracked a copy. I think we were both underwhelmed upon our first listen, which is hilarious to consider now. We gave the first few minutes of each track a cursory listen as we cruised back towards campus along the seemingly interminable strip-mall gauntlet that lined College Ave. Because these songs are slow to develop, because they insinuate themselves slowly into your musical vocabulary, because none of them start with a bang, we couldn�t immediately apprehend what was good or compelling or novel about them. We realized it would take time.

We were nearing campus and the old part of downtown Appleton when our impatient scanning process landed us at the final song, �Everglade.� Somehow this song got my attention right away: the pristine drum sound, the crystal-clear vibraphones, that classic Tortoise sound locking in as the rhythm resolved and the intertwining bass and guitar developed the song�s main theme. Sun and shadow alternated inside the car as we passed between buildings and under covered walkways, a sharpness to the light outside that suggested the earliest moments of spring. Eight months later I was standing outside on the Golden Gallery roof atop Saint Paul�s Cathedral in London, and that song was looping itself through my head as precisely as if I were listening to it on headphones. Maybe I was responding to being in such an unfamiliar and humbling environment; awed and intimidated by the sheer size and ancient legacy of my surroundings, battered by the early winter wind, I took refuge in a smaller-scale, more familiar artifact. When I went back downstairs, a boys� choir was about to begin Evensong.

In between those two moments, and in between the first and last tracks of TNT, there�s a lot of history, personal and otherwise. I barely stopped listening to this album, that spring and summer of 1998. I made a tape of it so I could listen to it in my Walkman during my figure-drawing class, hoping the sublime instrumental soundtrack would somehow inspire and elevate my amateur reproductions of the nude man or woman sitting in front of me. I got so tired of looking at naked people that spring. I stayed with the album through its electronic detours, its ambient, Steve Reich-inspired meditations, and its more conventional full-band compositions. I learned to love the title track�s mellow trombone flourishes (provided by Grinnell native Sara P. Smith). I learned to love the incongruity of Jeff Parker�s perfectly-executed jazz guitar solo near the end of the drum & bass epic �Jetty�. I learned to love the spaghetti-western lament of �I Set My Face To The Hillside�. I learned to love the half-asleep sonances of �Four-Day Interval�. I learned to love the syrupy synth washes warping in and out of �In Sarah Mencken Christ & Beethoven There Were Women & Men�. I learned to love the title of �In Sarah Mencken Christ & Beethoven There Were Women & Men�. But most of all, more than any other moment on this album, I learned to love �The Suspension Bridge At Iguazu Falls� in its entirety, and especially its climax at 3�26�, when the gurgling xylophones are overtaken by the majestic twin guitar theme before the vibraphones gradually return to put the song to bed. At half past three, the epiphany.

Aside from being a really kickass band, Tortoise represented a new stage for me, musically: estranged from drums and drumming while at Lawrence, overwhelmed by and unwelcome at the intensely competitive conservatory where non-major musicians were unheard of (at least in the overflowing percussion department), I gleaned from Tortoise a faint cue that maybe my time as a musician was not over--that if I was going to make John McEntire my drumming hero, I�d better be prepared to pick up my sticks again and either shit or get off the proverbial commode. This is what I eventually did when I graduated and rejoined a band and began once again to commune with musicians who didn�t necessarily have perfect pitch, weren't afraid to rock out, knew what sunlight looked like, and weren't 22-year-old virgins.

Tortoise has released two albums since TNT, both of them quite good. But neither of them have unseated this one as my favorite. To imagine the feats of socic innovation and thematic unity and percussive firepower that such a coup would require frightens me, and also stirs great hopes for each subsequent release.

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