Revolving Doors and All Tiny Creatures weave some ambience for Local Band Wednesdays
Audre Krull
"Oh, do they have music today?"
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Once the Terrace began hosting a weeknight series of local bands last year, it was clear that the audiences for these shows included, for better or worse, lots of people who just kinda happened to be out there drinking beer. Not that we like the idea of people treating some really good Madison bands as mere background music, but some musicians operate on the notion that the background can sneak up on you. One of the instrumental bands playing tonight's installment of Local Band Wednesdays, Revolving Doors, laughingly hints at this in the title of its second CD, Songs For Car Commercials. While these songs aren't amorphous gobs of blandness, they do approach slowly and sort of wait for listeners to warm up. They are modest, focused pop tunes, nicely layered with all number of carefully treated guitars and keyboards.
All Tiny Creatures don't attempt to pummel anyone with the usual instrumental-rock thunder, either, instead obsessing over structure and gradually stacking one nimble keyboard figure over another against a live-band-backdrop. On the surface, the track "To All Tiny Creatures" may seem pretty cut-and-dried, but as it builds up there's more and more complexity bubbling off into the faint distance. All around that clean keyboard line, there's something perversely attention-getting about the pretty stating that accrues throughout the song, and Decider can't help but hear a noise that sounds like the H.E.L.P.e.R. robot from The Venture Brothers. If something in the background can give you a thought like that, there's a lot more to it than relaxing and ignoring.
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