Poostosh's Herbarium is the kind of album you need to listen to while watching the visualizer available on whatever media player you're using. (What our parents did with records and cassettes, without visualizers to stare at, I have no idea.)
Watching a visualizer highlight the beats of the songs helps because Poostosh is a (Russian) instrumental band and their songs occasionally get a little too inventive. Without lyrics to concentrate on, or a consistent beat or rhythm of any kind, there isn't much to do but sit in confusion.
That's not to say the songs are all bad – they just lack direction that makes them pleasurable to listen to. I would never invite someone over and put Herbarium on. I actually can't think of a time or a mood where I would specifically want to listen to Poostosh. The songs are interesting, but their lack of consistency makes the album as a whole something you wouldn't want to listen to all at once (and isn't that the point of an album?).
A few instrumental bands somehow manage to pick song titles that perfectly represent what the song is about (consider Explosion in the Sky's “Snow and Lights”), but I don't think that's the case with Poostosh, unless something is lost in translation. Most of the songs sound pretty similar, but they all have strangely different names. What exactly does “Information Pressure Doesn't Affect An Eagle” mean, and how is it represented in the three minute song, which includes a lot of street noise, mumbling in different voices, and mystical guitar parts? How does “Life as We Forgot It” portray anything, when it's a collection of piano keys (I don't even think they're using chords – it sounds like just one key at a time) and weird effects, including something that sounds like a hair dryer?
Maybe Poostosh is just too advanced for us, but considering that they list a slew of classical artists as their influences, perhaps they're too advanced for themselves.
Key Tracks: “Rain Autumn” and “Life as We Forgot It”
March 17, 2010
