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Title: Corny Pastiche
Review: Tortoise's music used to be a lush and convoluted affair, and their rampant borrowing of motifs from aged soundtracks and lounge jazz were made all the more palatable by the way in which these were integrated with contemporary electronica and good ol' fashioned rock attitude. But "Standards" is beyond the pale - devoid of any real creative direction, it is a shameless jumble of hackneyed instrumental references. Way too clever and media-literate for it's own good, it offers too many references and no musical message of any real substance - the sound of post-modernism gone horribly wrong.The musical content of this album scores two stars, but it loses another due to the overprocessed and unsubtle production - "Standards" sounds hopelessly overcompressed and totally lacking in natural dynamics.
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