The Forms

Item: Icarus
Author: Tyler Baber

Icarus

(2003)

Reviewed by Tyler Baber

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Label ThreespheresDecapolisFebruary 2003

art rock emo experimental indie rock

The Forms are a three person art-pop idea. Their debut album, Icarus is available on Three Spheres Records.

"There's no reason to mince words: The Forms' Icarus is the best debut record to come around in a long, long time." Thus opens the first paragraph of the press sheet accompanying a well designed package that I received, a package that seemed mysterious and clever enough to catch this reviewer's eye as something he might like. I generally don't make it a practice to get hyped up about a band based on a press sheet, but likening Icarus to Sunny Day Real Estate's Diary seemed like quite a statement and I needed to believe that I was going to hear a record that would change my life. So I opened past the glossy case, ignored the liner notes which were neatly tucked in an envelope style opening in the case (I wasn't missing anything, as they are just half decent photographs), and put the album in my player. I just listened, and I liked what I heard. This wasn't the emo rip off I was expecting, this was well crafted music layered over nice sounding and completely muffled vocals. I had a feeling I was in for a treat, and then without realizing it the album was over. I looked at my CD player and sure enough, track 10 was finished. The time the album took? A little over 18 minutes and 19 seconds. What the-?

Yes, Icarus, an album praised by respected indie zines such as Pitchfork Media may very well be the most pretentious debut in musical history. Take a look at these examples:

The Forms are a self described "new edge rock trio" and at least one of their band members performs under a moniker, although I have to doubt that Ecco Teres is the singer's real name
Icarus was produced by Steve Albini over the course of one week. Albini has been quoted saying that the Forms layered more tracks on this album than any other recording he's done. Anyone familiar enough with Steve Albini knows that he produced some of the best grunge albums. Grunge production is not well known for being technically complicated, and there's a reason Albini doesn't normally produce technically complicated music.
The Forms are described as an "experience." cough
The album consists of 10 tracks and seven songs, the longest clocking in at a little over three and a half minutes.
Icarus is an enhanced cd. Pop it in your computer and you get to look at poorly photographed pictures of barren urban land. Yeah, we get it. And it's not interesting.
Concept bands only work if someone understands the concept.
Apparently these guys are amazing live and you can't really get the point until you see them. That is akin to saying a band consists of nice guys, so their music can't be that bad.

It isn't that I dislike ostentatious music. Take a look at my favorite bands, at least three of them constantly work with "weird for the sake of weird" stylings. It's not that I dislike this album, the music is crafted well enough and it does momentarily intrigue the listener. But The Forms would have been better to be like other impossible to understand bands and save their pretentiousness until they already had an artsy-fartsy following. It worked for Sigur Rós.