Where There’s Hope There’s Fire
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The band had just released its fourth and strongest album, People People Why Are We Fighting? (Flydaddy), and Cohen was pleased with their reception on the road. But as the tour was winding down, guitarist Patrick O’Connell announced that he was leaving to focus on acoustic music, and Lenzi said he wanted to switch from drums to guitar. “[Seth] had this miraculous recovery from breaking his neck, and then we broke up the band,” says Lenzi, laughing. Number One Cup played its final show that February at Lounge Ax.
Lenzi and Cohen spent the second half of 1999 developing new material and recruiting bassist Brian Lubinsky and drummer Eric Roth. Number One Cup often betrayed a slavish admiration for indie-rock guitar acts like Pavement and Superchunk, but Lenzi’s minimalist approach to the instrument immediately distinguished the new project. “I had an idea of what I wanted to do, and that’s exactly what I’m doing in the group now,” says Lenzi. “It involves doing very little.”
After expanding their instrumental palette and stylistic reach with each new album, Tortoise have finally distilled their wide-ranging interests into a sharply focused collection. Standards (Thrill Jockey), which arrived in stores this week, is the quintet’s most concise work, balancing their rock foundations with electronics and smatterings of fusion, electro-funk, and imaginary sound tracks. Each of the ten cuts is both richly detailed and carefully layered, yielding something new with each listen, but for the first time since its 1994 debut the band has resisted the temptation to bite off more than it can chew: every sound, gesture, and lick seems absolutely essential.
