Experimental Chicago trio
Typical Sisters further expand their sound on their unpredictable third album, 2021's
Love Beam. On past albums,
Typical Sisters played a far-reaching brand of instrumental jazz and post-rock that straddled the line between the fractured lyricism of
Bill Frisell and the mathematical grooves of
Tortoise. And while the group's core sound remains, with
Love Beam they push this genre-bending approach even further, incorporating an array of digital recording tools and post-production elements from voice recordings made on their phone to drum loops. Once again, the record is a collaboration between guitarist Gregory Uhlmann, bassist
Clark Sommers, and drummer Matt Carroll. Together they tracked the album in a week with co-producer Tim Carr and then spent several months re-working the tracks in post-production, eventually handing them over to producer
Paul Bryan for mixing and
Dave Cooley for mastering. The result is easily
Typical Sisters' most adventurous outing to date, with songs that range from lo-fi and glitchy, like "Water Plants" with its captured spoken word conversation and Hawaiian space guitar accents, and infectiously funky, like "Clamata'' with its
Meters-esque rubberband groove. Equally textural tracks follow including "Owl," in which Uhlmann drops a shimmer of brittle, broken glass chords over a dusky, sand-dune bass and drum rhythm. They split the difference on "Recurring Memory," bringing together a hooky '80s Krautrock beat with fuzztone doom bass and tropical guitar flourishes. More esoteric cuts follow, including "Oregano," which sounds like a mad scientist lab track off a '60s Halloween-themed album. It shouldn't be a surprise if other cinematic conceptual ideas pop into your head while listening to
Love Beam, a testament to
Typical Sisters' broad, dream-like creativity. ~ Matt Collar