The Works of Drew Tewksbury, a Multimedia Journalist

Album Reviews

El Ten Eleven – These Promises are Being Videotaped

By Drew Tewksbury ⋅ November 2, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

The double-neck guitar is the ultimate signifier of musical masturbation and phallocentric crotch rocking. That is, unless you’re El Ten Eleven, the post-rock duo from Los Angeles, who lay down simple rhythms, then wield the finished product as mechanized dance jams. During live performances, Kristian Dunn, brandishing his beautiful guitar/bass, and drummer Tim Fogarty create pulsating, fist-pumping songs with their trusty looping pedals. It’s the musical equivalent of spinning plates. Dunn lays down a simple guitar riff, then loops it, then he overlays a bass line and loops that, too. Lather, rinse, repeat, and, voilà, the resulting sound is Daft Punk thumping ad infinitum. But, whereas Daft Punk is robotized, El Ten Eleven provides a real-time experience that pits man against machine. And, so it becomes challenging to encapsulate and replicate the energy of the band’s intensely entertaining live act on the CD, where the songs must stand alone, leaving by the wayside any ego-stroking by fellow musicians. El Ten Eleven’s These Promises Are Being Videotaped takes on this challenge and ultimately succeeds. Instead of relying solely on the spectacular (but not gimmicky) aspects of their live show, the record takes a breath and polishes up the edges. Abandoning the double-neck, Dunn creates the entire record on a fretless bass (which, as any douchebag musician can attest, is harder to play than a double-neck. Not like you care.), but he does not simply replicate Spinal Tap’s three-bass wunderkind, “Big Bottom.” The first track, “Jumping Frenchmen of Maine,” epitomizes El Ten Eleven’s dance-floor rocker: a sonic-groove pyramid built one brick at a time by embellishing a simple riff until it swells into a sweet floor-stomper. The stupidly named “I Like Van Halen Because My Sister Says They Are Cool” (perhaps taking an ill-informed bite from instrumental post-rockers Don Caballero), is El Ten Eleven’s poppiest track, ripe for iPod commercials and one-off release parties at boutique hotels, sponsored by artesian-water corporations. Yet, there’s still an edge to the record that provides undeniable street cred. On paper, El Ten Eleven might seem like a musician’s band, but their danceable songs keep them grounded and accessible to non-musicians. Well, that is, until Dunn plays Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” entirely on fretless bass. Dude, yes way.