Send "Pterodactyl " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Focus too long on any one part of Spills Out, the third LP from psych-splattered Brooklynite post-punk manglers Pterodactyl, and you risk losing track of the rest of it. The sprawling set from the shapeshifting band is bristling with basement-show energy one minute, stacking haunting Zombies-style harmonies the next. The pixelated, post-everything whoosh of their earlier, more forceful records is still very much in evidence on Spills Out, but it's as though their turn-on-a-dime cubism's been given the SpinArt treatment, globs of melody pooling at its edges. This unlikely meetup-- of Les Savy Fav's hard-driving antsiness, the Olivia Tremor Control's echoing psych-pop, Abe Vigoda's clangy hot-weather punk, and any three or four second-tier SST bands of your choosing-- sometimes smacks of eclectic overextension, but for the most part, Spills Out manages to revel in its own clutter.Spills Out's first five numbers are all about propulsion, zig-zagging melodies and breathless vocals underpinned by insistent, edge-of-calamity drumbeats. This, in large part, is the art-punking Pterodactyl of old, never ones to shy away from melody, provided they can make it move. At times, the vigorous rhythms threaten to get the best of the trickily constructed tunes they're mobilizing, but at this pace, they leave precious little time to notice. The woozy lurch of "Allergy Shots" is quite a toneshift, its duskily triumphant melody marching its way directly into your pituitary region. Though 2010's Arnold's Park saw Pterodactyl playing around with psychedelia-- the acoustic flitters of Sung Tongs-era Animal Collective, among other things-- here, Spills Out burrows its way into the rabbit hole on something of a mid-album mini-suite of thick, woozy psych. Rife with spectral sound effects and blurry, tape-stressing maximalism, many of these songs could've fallen off the back end of last year's stellar Olivia Tremor Control reissues. Like the Olivias, Pterodactyl wrest cohesion from calamity by soldiering surefootedly through all these far-flung juxtapositions, presenting these disparate styles as though they're supposed to go together. But even on the sprightlier numbers, Pterodactyl's formidable instrumental prowess sometimes blots out the songs themselves; with tempos slowed and melodies pushed to the forefront rather than rattling around the edges, they're downplaying their strengths in favor of an experiment that proves only somewhat successful....full text |
| Tinymixtapes |
| In a 2007 interview with TMT, frontman Joe Kremer admitted that Pterodactyl’s walls of shred-a-tonic trebly noise might just be a phase, that there was “a chance that [their] music will get more pleasant, as time goes on.” In advance of Spills Out, underappreciated drummer Matt Marlin made similar remarks to Boston University’s Daily Free Press, saying the new album “bridges a new excitement with slightly poppy, more sunnier stuff with the brooding, moody noisy stuff of the past.” So it’s not surprising that Spills Out is a slightly sunnier, more pleasant endeavor than their self-titled debut. But it’s an evolution, not a clean break; the clouds of guitar noise, the layered vocals, and the tightly-coiled interlocking melodies are all still there, but this time they’re shaped around more accessible and, yes, slightly nerdy songwriting. Pterodactyl is a power trio, but you wouldn’t know it listening to Spills Out. Lyrically, this album is clever, light fare, appropriate for a band that is named after a winged dinosaur and that stubbornly puts birds on their album covers. Universal anxieties of life vs. career (“The Break”), “feeling tethered” (“White Water”), and the dispossessions of modernity (“Allergy Shots”) are approached with the sort of apprehension that might accompany a run-in with a pterosaur. “Nerds” is the darkest song I’ve ever heard that borrowed a hook from Zelda — “Extra life, found a heart/ Warp ahead, face the truth/ The final boss was always you.” Musically, Spills Out tips its hat to prog and jagged DC punk but remains in the hinterlands of the pop form. “Hold Still” recalls Akron/Family’s louder moments, and the repeated monotone choruses draw comparisons to Merriweather Post Pavilion, but the chord progression is more retro, like a noisier Beatles or the Scooby Doo theme on acid. “Allergy Shots” chugs along thanks to a crunchy bass line straight out of London Calling. The verses to “The Hole Night” sound a lot like The Turtles’ “Happy Together,” but you’ll hear no sprightly relative-major chorus here, just a squalling guitar solo and a Zombies-like chorus. And they pull back the density a bit for “Thorn,” a spacious number that recalls Spiritualized for its juxtaposition of gospel-tinged melodies and slacker-devotional pronouncements like “all I want is here and this and now.”...full text |
| Cmj |
| In the video for the song “School Glue,” Pterodactyl recreates that scene from Superman where Superman’s dad traps the bad guys in a weird space-mirror. Spills Out, the band’s third album, holds the tracks in much the same way. These are songs bristling with dark energy, unconstrained and galloping. But as the band pushes at the boundaries you can feel the strain at the edges. You couldn’t have a better title than Spills Out because at every turn and every track the album is pushing up the RPMs to the point the engine begins to whine, smoke and threaten to explode. The last two records were signs a tectonic shift was coming. The band’s sound-searching debut gave way to meditation on the sophomore Worldwild with pagan drums and chants about waterfalls. On Spills Out Pterodactyl is crafting that same deeply satisfying melodic work only with a fueled bent to make plutonium-powered pop. This is at its best in tracks like “The Hole Night.” Easily the most restrained of the bunch, the early Beatles crooning gives the track a multi-part vocal harmony that bounces nicely off of the crash and roll of drums. The monolithic guitar fuzz and ambient keys lend a constant sense of space as well as motion. Where you begin to feel the album strain is in a track like “Thorn.” It shapes up like a death-metal intro, all swells and dark drones, but the build lasts a whole minute before breaking. The middle of the song pounds you relentlessly with guitar crashes. It’s like Thor’s hammer gone to town on your head. The six hours it took for singer Jesse Hodges to record the chorale to the song marks a significant investment on the track making the cut. Experimenting with walls of sound makes you walk a fine line, and Pterodactyl here winds up on the wrong side....full text |
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