It's not every day you run across a singles collection that
contains only five songs and stretches them out to almost 70
minutes. But San Francisco five piece Tarentel, whatever their
other virtues, have mastered the difficult practice of patience.
Like Labradford, they know that getting there is half the,
well... I guess "fun" is probably the wrong word. Let's just say
that the journey is its own reward. These songs take their time.
The first thing you'll notice if you come to Tarentel through
last year's album The Order of Things (like I do) is that these
tracks are comparatively skeletal. No orchestral flourishes,
vocals or scratchy field recording samples here. Ephemera is
basically guitar, bass, drums and a little keyboard, with heavy
emphasis on the guitar. Somewhere after the time of Spiderland,
indie musicians the world over fell completely in love with the
sound of a plucked electric patched into a nice amp, and decided
that this simple sound, slowly moving through the notes of a
chord, one by one,