Greater Lanarkshire Auricular Research Council describe their efforts as “provid[ing] aural consultancy, cassette based explication, applied research and listening support.” Both the label and Still House Plants are from Glasgow, and Still House Plants are Finlay Clark, David Kennedy, Jessica Hickle-Lallenbach, and Calum O’Connor. Coming from the other side of this cassette, this information comes off as a full description. In its minuteness, it suggests the ringing sobriety and oddly abductive feel of Still House Plants.
Still House Plants has the frustrating static of rounded Styrofoam corners; The overtly simple drums sound like they’re coming from someone coming down. The guitar chords are tense, but barely electric. The overall mood is kinetic; it’d be missing the mark to call it patient. In a sour mood, you could dismiss Still House Plants as a sad Slint, or a post-rock dress rehearsal. But their demeanor—bordering relentless hesitation and pure apathy—comes off with the grace of a pendulum. The movements—the strums, the hits, the plucks—are where you’ll find the music’s expressiveness. The four songs stay within a radius and are pulled together by stoic pulses concerned with steadiness, not repetition.
Still House Plants isn’t exactly timeless, but maybe it’s exempt from freezer burn; It steers clear of timely influences and it almost seems like that’s its purpose. It’s by far the recording’s most alluring property. It could live in a world of monochrome TVs just as easily as one with biometric scanners. And it comes off as a self-portrait performed with the effortless drift of an autograph. Still House Plants is contained, but it’s coaxes enough to tell listeners to stop and look at it under different lights, and to see its refractions as inseparable.
