Send "Dosh " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Adequacy |
 When I caught Andrew Bird at least year’s Austin City Limits Festival, he sported his usual charm and wit – and sure, he brought his ‘A’ game with amazing new takes on his own songs. But at the side of him, neatly situated behind a drum set, drum machine and electric piano was Dosh. Bird would often allow the multi-instrumentalist to lead the tempo on a song here, take over the melody on a different one there, and so on. Through every drum fill or rhythmic escape, it was apparent that this wasn’t just one gifted musician and his backing band but rather, Dosh fully held his ground, elevating the night’s performance into something that could be labeled as freakishly good.On that same note, the exact same thing could be said about Dosh’s fifth album, Tommy. Named in memory of his lost friend, Tom Cesario, Dosh pulls together an album that carries all of his fashionable trademarks and turns them into an album that just might be his best yet. Not only is the music he’s created something to behold but there are countless moments where there is nothing left to do but relentlessly nod away. The styles change throughout the pictures, with every new sound harking back to an image of wonderment. And overall, it captures a musician that is rightfully and dutifully crafting excellent music. He’s stretched out immensely, covering the deepest aspects of his arsenal with a confident whip of the hand. Instead of slowly sucking us in with an opening bliss of tenderness, Dosh comes crashing in with his trademark keyboard sound while his drums comfortably toy about. It’s a celebratory outlook on life in that even after we’ve passed, the people left behind can sit back and reminisce on the good times; although we get to some sadness (the ending epic shredding of “Gare de Lyon”), there is far too much good occurring here....full text |
| Drownedinsound |
| However you care to define it, anticon. seems to have an ethos that connects its roster together, some thread or blood bond that unites it all. And although most bands on the label can be connected in a couple of steps through their collaborations, they still end up sounding unique musically. Plot it out on a scatter diagram and you'd be able to draw a clear line of best fit, from Why? to cLOUDDEAD to Subtle to Odd Nosdam and so on. Somewhere on that graph you'd find this, almost an anomaly. On Tommy, his fifth opus, Martin Dosh welds so many pieces together it's as good as beyond categorisation. The press release calls this post rock, but that doesn't come close. 'Call The Kettle' draws near that kind of labelling, but sounds more like The Earlies channelling Zappa, saxophones and synths repeating the same motif until it all fades out with a squalling guitar writhing over Zero 7-esque (in a good way) chilled beats. There are parts that are reminiscent of Max Tundra's instrumental passages, but that doesn't quite fit, cos things aren't as pop minded. There are parts that bring up Broken Social Scene's more relaxed spaces, but not regularly enough for the comparison to work. We can play a game of trading influences, but Dosh has taken so many different fragments of musical culture we'll be talking all day....full text |
| Allmusic |
| Martin Dosh describes the minimal, repetitive soundscapes he assembles as post-rock, a genre that's as vague and inclusive as the music he makes on Tommy. (The album has absolutely nothing in common with the Who's album of the same name, in case you're wondering.) The pieces here -- it's hard to call them songs or tracks -- are almost ambient, but there's too much noise and too many shifting sounds to keep you from spacing out for too long. It could be called space music, but it eschews the soothing sounds associated with that genre. Maybe you could call it music from the heart of a black hole, a thick sonic stew that can shift from compellingly rhythmic to playfully experimental to annoyingly harsh. There is more singing here than on most of Dosh's other albums, but the results aren't actually songs as such. Scatting voices, skittering keyboards, and what sounds like a toy piano swim through the vaguely African rhythms of "Subtractions." A vocal that sounds like a distracted child making up a "song" weaves in and out of the dense layers of percussion on "Town Mouse" accompanied by random sax squeaks. Andrew Bird sings on "Number 41" over ambient steel guitar, a thumping almost-rock rhythm section heavy on the bass, and occasional acoustic guitar. It's as close to pop as the album gets. The drum'n'bass excursion of "Yer Face" has woozy mostly unintelligible vocals, but it's charming nonetheless. Bird also contributes vocals to "Nevermet," but again they get buried in the thumping mix of bass, acoustic guitar, and drums. The instrumentals include "Loud," with a linear piano line and effects that create the feeling of a big dark echoing space; "Airlift," with its choppy beat and long, sustained keyboard notes; "Country Road X," which sounds like an electric piano floating through a '70s airport lounge in the mid-afternoon; and the disc closer, "Gare de Lyon," the most unique and annoying track on the disc. Drums that sound like a real drum kit played in real time clash with piano tinkles and processed space noise, slowly building to a rush of processed sound before subsiding to a rocking minimal bassline and a guitar bashing out distorted metallic chords....full text |
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