July 2, 2013 • MALS
A while back, I did a scathing review of the first Krobak album The Diary of the Missed One; I was so disappointed with it that I never bothered to revisit the band. It's been some time and with a few more albums in-between, I'm happy to report that the years have been good to Krobak. Little Victories is a major step up compared to the debut and one that's quite a lot more worthwhile.
As I missed their second and third albums, there's probably a lot of development I didn't hear in the meantime, but there are still a lot of changes worth pointing out. One major one is that Krobak is now an actual band, with actual drums and actual bass (whew). Production can often make or break an album and they fortunately sound quite good here. Notable is the prominent use of violin, to the point where sometimes it's pretty much the main instrument now and the guitar hangs in the background supporting it. There is a lot of good interplay between the violin and guitar through most of the album, I think that was handled really well.
The songwriting has massively improved, as well. The generic "crescendocore" buildups and repetitive guitar vamping are gone in favor of something a bit more "song"-like (even though there still aren't vocals) that's actually quite interesting to listen to. A bit more of the Mogwai or Clann Zú school, perhaps. It's still slow and dirgey, but in a much more appealing way; it goes places, progresses.
Even though I still firmly maintain that post-rock is still pretty much a dead genre, it's clear that bands are still fully capable of making good albums in the genre, as Krobak shows here. No, it's nothing groundbreaking and I didn't expect it to be, but if it's something I'm in the mood for it definitely makes for a good listen.
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