Can it be too difficult an exercise to tap into the human experience? For that matter, can one try too hard, perhaps get too little results? Is it a bad thing that one shouldn’t be too surprised with themselves if such questions arise in their experience of listening to this album?
With three albums and an EP under their belt so far, The Dodos are clearly not without their talent. Who knows what emotional reaction one is likely to feel upon firing up Time to Die. There is an appealing forward-moving momentum in this record that is difficult to ignore. It has within its modest and confined sense of a comfort zone an air of quiet contemplation. Drive your thinly-metal-plated auto down a long and dusty desert road under the watchful eye of an orange orb in the sky and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to have this collection of tunes playing on your stereo. This is road-trip music, most definitely. A fantastic accomplishment if anything, because finding music that truly places one in a contemplative mood, facilitating as much of a journey of the mind as that of the body, is no easy task. I would encourage all to therefore laud this album’s efforts to place the subconscious of its listener on such a meta-journey of the mind.
The album’s inherent failing however, is in that it is not made for the impatient. Its lyrical content drives it towards mindful exploration of the self, so it’s not made for a great deal of levity. One has to slow themselves down, or be made to slow down in order to facilitate a state of being for one’s subconscious to truly absorb and appreciate all that is present in Time to Die. This potentially makes for limited listening opportunities, less chances to enjoy the record, and so perhaps less audience in the end. Time to Die has a sense of only being able to be listened to at certain times of the day. Those unsure of this message may be referred to Nine Inch Nails for instance – a band whose music is ideally suited for nighttime listening (honestly, can you envision rocking out to NiN’s “Closer” or “March of the Pigs” at ten in the morning for instance? *Bam*, point made). Take this all as you will, as there are plenty of artists out there that are perfectly content to market themselves to a smaller audience of more consistently loyal fans, such as with Amanda Palmer, Vermillion Lies, and local peddlers of awesome Lullabye Arkestra to name but a few.
There is another fault that Time to Die carries with it. It attempts to access a genre of music that has been done to death. Society as an entity is on a perpetual journey of “westward expansion”, seeking forever to create new frontiers for itself. It is in our nature to not just settle for what we have at the current moment, as we must define it (in part) in comparison to what else is “out there”. Culture, any culture, is always on a quest to know more, to continue journeying somewhere. For this reason, there will always be people questing for the unknown that yearns to be discovered – so why not have some appropriate tunes to accompany one on their journey to help facilitate the mood?
It is easy to fall short when creating works in such a specific sub-genre of music. A large factor in this fibrillation of the journey tune is the uniquely qualified artists that have aided its continued health. Guthrie, Dylan, hell, even Led Zeppelin have understood its importance in understanding the human condition. The album is laudable in its attempts to carry on this same message of importance, however, it appears to fall short in the fact that it does not seem to bring anything unique and distinctive to the genre. Its sound can be found elsewhere.
(6.5/10)
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