Om – Advaitic Songs

July 24, 2012 • Drag City

You're going to hear some bias in this review. I never liked Om. I have always found their style of music to be incredibly boring—glacial tempos, mind-numbing one-note guitar lines, overly-simplistic drums, drawling and monotonous vocals. I don't even know why I bothered to check out Advaitic Songs in the first place. I guess there's no way I could have known that my opinion of them would completely turn around with this album.

Aside from "State of Non-Return", the annoying stoner rock style is basically gone, in favor of a similarly plodding but much more interesting "drone-rock" sort of thing. Finally, the slow repetitive rhythms work in Om's favor, and instead of boring rock we are treated to a variety of different textures and instruments (string ensembles, synthesizers, tabla, and plenty of other traditional Arab instruments whose names I don't know, just to mention a few). Apparently they've been playing with Arabic styles since 2009's God is Good, which I passed on, and that continues here. And they are apparently great at fusing this style with their own into something that isn't quite rock, but isn't Arabic music either. Maybe it's not unique, but it's definitely unusual, and it sounds awesome.

Another one of the best things about this album is the drumming. It's still very repetitive but somehow it's way better here than I remember on their first two albums. It's very punchy, for lack of a better term, and carries the other instruments and holds everything together really well. Take about three and a half minutes into "Gethsemane"—the drums and bass form a really great infectious groove. It's almost like some kind of minimalist krautrock. (As others have pointed out, the drummer is new, which explains the change. He also played in the great band Grails, which I thought was cool.)

The vocals are still a bit dull but I guess they finally fit the music much better; you could equate them to some sort of monophonic chanting (I guess they don't call themselves Om for nothing). But aside from that, I can't think of much to complain about—they keep it pretty interesting nonstop, and there isn't really a track here I don't like (though "Gethsemane" and "Haqq al-Yaqin" deserve special mention).

So there you go—more proof that some bands do get better with age. I hope they keep up this trajectory.

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