Tortoise

At its best, Tortoise is a refreshingly sophisticated pop group that just happens to lack a vocalist. Consider “Prepare Your Coffin,” the lead single from the band’s sixth full-length: It’s a blazing three-and-a-half minute mini epic that recalls the early-’70s heyday of adventurous, fusion-infused rock. A full album of tracks this action-packed and ambitious would position Tortoise as the aughts’ answer to Steely Dan or even Chicago.

But where “Prepare Your Coffin” comes off as a beautifully fleshed-out song, many of the other tracks on Beacons of Ancestorship merely register as expertly produced sonic sketches. Electronica-leaning pieces like “Northern Something” and “Monument Six One Thousand” are pleasant but unengaging, like half-baked remixes of songs you’ve never actually heard. Other pieces, such as the smoky “The Fall of Seven Diamonds Plus One”—featuring Jeff Parker’s heavily twanged guitar and percussion that sounds like rattling chains—flirt frustratingly with soundtrack schmaltz.

The album’s weak points aren’t likely to surprise longtime listeners, who have been reckoning with similarly mixed bags since 1998’s TNT. The biggest revelation of Beacons is the punky rawness evident on “Yinxianghechengqi,” which boasts a driving, distorted rhythm track that might have been lifted from Tortoise’s citymates Shellac. Assuming the band can find a way to fuse that grittiness with the prog-pop bravado of “Prepare Your Coffin,” its next effort just may outpace the dreaded post-rock tag once and for all.—Hank Shteamer

Tortoise plays (Le) Poisson Rouge July 21.

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