Anonymously,
a four-track EP titled 9 was released, via Bandcamp by the artist known as
TANK. TANK is said to be a project where the music surrounds you as if you were
stuck in a tank of liquid, absorbing the noise around you. It then began to act as a “Tank” to hold
miscellaneous feelings, as well as music. The Bandcamp page describes it as
such:
Imperfect and tangible. Liquid. An
ominous slap to the soul. Listen, and you get it. Make yourself vulnerable. Eat
the sound. Hear it, but do not listen. Let it naturally grow around you. Swim
in the tank.
Hard
to argue with that. The EP opens up with the distorted guitar riff of
“Confidential”, then continues with drums and another guitar added in. The
vocal style comes in like blown-out speakers, or a distorted megaphone. TANK’s
vocal style was mainly inspired by Youth Lagoon, but also took on some
inspiration from Sigur Ros and Bon Iver. The emotion bottled up, with lines
like “Let the cool kids that fucked up their lives compliment each other
indefinitely”, eventually explodes more than half way through the track with
heavier guitar, blasting drums, and a subtle squealing guitar in the distance.
An emotional first track features even more heartbreaking lyrics, “It’s true
what they say/ You can’t save anyone these days”.
Thinking
of this EP in relative terms of said “Tank”, I think of “Confidence” as being
the first step of being thrown in and trapped in the tank. Its heavier guitar riffs
and emotional lyrics suggest this. Then the second track “Overgrown” is fully
submerged and forced to be in the
tank. Slow percussive sounds surrounded by piano chords, and the vocals sound
like they are underwater. Without the lyrics being on the page, you may not
have even known that there were words present.
The
third track, “Tall and Spineless”, takes on more of the rock element of the
element, as well as anger and heartbreak filled lyrics. You can feel the pain
and anguish in TANK’s voice screaming out “I’d rather be here, tall and
spineless, / then be sure and perfect. / Any day of the week.” The vocals
occasionally skipping and cutting out (intentionally) suggest a deeper sense of
being cutoff and ignored by someone.
The
final track, “A Small Resemblance”, goes back on the more ambient and “liquid”
sound experienced in “Overgrown”. Roughly halfway through “A Small Resemblance”
the drums began to stop and cut out in a way that makes you check your
headphone jack to make sure something hasn’t gone wrong, but it is in fact all
intentional. 9 is full of powerful
lyricism including lines like, “Look deep inside my eyes. / There is something
dying and inside of you.” Let us not forget to mention that at the bottom of
the artist’s page one of the tagged words is “lonely”. Among the words that
describe what the music sounds like
there is one word set aside that is the emotion
of the music: lonely.
This
EP is multidimensional with so many layers and subtle intricacies in a short
four songs. Be on the lookout for more from TANK, because we will be in for a
treat. 9 is a fantastic EP that I
only wish was longer, because those four tracks leave me begging for more. So
take my advice, and “swim in the tank.”
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