Record Review: Boards of Canada – Tomorrow’s Harvest

boards of canadaMark Twain once famously called The Book of Mormon, “chloroform in print.”  Anyone who’s tried to get through First Nephi knows exactly what Twain was talking about, even if they don’t openly admit it.

And much like Mormon doctrine, Boards of Canada’s first record in eight years, Tomorrow’s Harvest, is great for sleeping to, but discourages all the fun stuff in life: fucking, dancing, and partying.  And I sincerely apologize to those who love BOC, and especially to the poor sucker who paid $5700 for some snippet of their music on Ebay this spring.  But let’s just cut the shit and admit what this really is, shall we?

Tororrow’s Harvest is a colossal bore.

The question then, is how much of a coup de grâce is that, really?  The past few years, since BOC’s last record, have seen several marvelous releases in ambient/electronic music.  Tomorrow’s Harvest just doesn’t happen to be in the same league.  A refresher in their past successes doesn’t do much to add gravity to this release either.  BOC’s most famous – and critically acclaimed – album, 1998’s Music Has The Right To Children, was much like this, a nostalgically minded, sort of cool, yet mostly bloodless album.

But, at least that record was unique and accordingly influential.  At the time there were very few ambient artists at all, let alone any of their caliber.  Today, that is no longer true.

Therefore, it was imperative for them to step their game up.  Unfortunately, you’re unlikely to find anything surprising on Tomorrow’s Harvest, a record that is essentially a pretty, but inferior re-hash of Children on all counts.

I mean, for what it’s worth Tomorrow’s Harvest is not unpleasant and occasionally haunting music.  And that does count for something. But there isn’t a single moment that truly grabs you, a song you can point to and say, “This is why you should love these guys.”

Don’t think that I didn’t try to find such a moment either.  After several listens the closest thing to a standout was “Palace Posy,” a head-nod worthy track with a nice but completely forgettable melody.  Thankfully, it’s not as if Boards of Canada have forgotten how to build complicated sonic textures, it’s just that they seem to be resting pretty hard on their laurels.

boards_of_canada_2013The fact is, artists need to work a lot harder on an instrumental album to provide a compelling reason for spinning it more than once.  BOC failed to rise to that challenge here.  What we have instead is a group who is no longer on the vanguard of ambient music.  Who is unable to best, or even conjure up a close approximation to the visceral horror of The Haxan Cloak, the explorative spirit of Jon Hopkins, the heroic bliss of Stars of the Lid, or the impressionistic beauty of Eluvium.  Boards of Canada, a once influential band, now wallow as also-rans.

Ultimately, Tomorrow’s Harvest is a lot like Joseph Smith’s often-mocked dependence on “And it came to pass” in another way too. Boards of Canada struggled to find something new to say and, in desperation, decided to write the same thing over and over again in the hopes that divine inspiration would happen somewhere along the way.

But it didn’t.

Rating: 3/5