Joe Westerlund: Curiosities From the Shift Album Review

After recording alone at Sylvan Esso’s studio, Westerlund had friends like Califone’s Tim Rutili, saxophonist Sam Gendel, and violinist Libby Rodenbough make their marks, drawing out the songfulness of his pitched percussion and electronic washes—his kaleidoscopic mills of hand drums, shakers, metallophones, thumb pianos, flutes, field recordings, and so on. To call it a percussion album probably gives the wrong idea of austerity and intensity, when the music is really driven by its transparent density and uncanny efflorescence of textures and colors. It’s vivid and exciting in the manner of techno, though dancing to it would be a path to insanity, and it’s beautiful and subtle in the manner of concert music without taking itself quite so seriously.

For all of his evident technical ability, Westerlund’s music seems most concerned with vibe and feel, and each track on Curiosities gives us a different way to perceive meaning in motion. “Nu Male Uno” is moist-eyed like Animal Collective, draping a swaying theme over a sashaying ant-line of little pulses. “Peebles ’n’ Stones” is an array of seemingly disparate parts—unwinding clockwork, essayistic constructions of mixed percussion, glassily shattering piano phrases—inextricably linked like falling dominos. “Can Tangle” distills a knack for coating sweet, tiny songs in glittering scales of rhythmic and timbral elaboration.

There are still many surprises to come—the dubby noir of “Persurverance,” the computerized scramble and galumph of “Furahai,” the perfumed Italo splashes of “Midpoint,” and the mighty churn of “Elegy (for OLAibi),” which begins in sinuous reverie and ends in rapture. Throughout his work, Westerlund makes beats feel less like unilateral lines and more like vast webs vibrating with sympathetic reactions—percussion as ecosystem, not the bulldozer plowing through it. This approach, rigorous yet flexible and fluid, has a natural synergy with the clave on Curiosities From the Shift. Though clearly born out of strenuous study and effort, it’s an easy and captivating listen, which is the essence of his generous, endlessly generative approach to music.

Joe Westerlund: Curiosities From the Shift