I live about three miles from this club in Hoboken, NJ called Maxwell’s. Most famous as the stage-setting for Bruce Springsteen’s ’Glory Days‘ video in the ‘80s, Maxwell’s also become fairly infamous as the go-to club for a good variety of underground bands that wanted a show in the NYC area, but didn’t want to bother driving through the tunnel into the city, loading-out on a busy intersection or struggling to find parking for a van and trailer. Maxwell’s provides an easy loophole, and occasionally, a good band or three comes through, which is how I came to experience Chicago’s Russian Circles.
The band, a three-piece instrumental act towing an indecipherable line between post-rock and metal (while avoiding the cliche song writing formula of slow crescendo to volatile explosion) recently released their second full-length album. The aptly titled ‘Station,’ (Suicide Squeeze Records) not to be confused with the character Station from Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. Well, maybe it is, I can’t say for sure.
‘Station,’ produced by Seattle’s Matt Bayles, is difficult to write about and utterly astonishing to listen to. I’ll be honest, the workings of the instrumental post-rock underground were starting to come off as kinda formulaic to me, and I had for the most part given up on venturing into the territory. But ‘Station’ throws my preconceived notions away and allows the listener some time to breathe. By that, I mean that Russian Circles has learned to balance tension with ease, ushering their songs in and out of an unknown instrumental middle ground between haunting beauty and crushing metal. They’re not Explosions in the Sky. And they’re not Pelican either. But they’re ALSO not a hybrid of the two. ‘Station,’ at times, is angry, cathartic without being formulaic, beguiling and serene. I guess the best thing I could say about Russian Circles is that they aren’t going to be making the jump into soundtrack land anytime soon. They’re too busy challenging conjecture to ever get stuck on one emotion (or note) for too long.
In simpler terms, Russian Circles doesn’t establish atmosphere, they slash and burn. And Maxwell’s, as a result, is probably still recovering…
To stream selections from Russian Circles, check out their MySpace here: http://www.myspace.com/russiancircles
