Tonne
Family & Me
(Self-released)
C+
Little has changed since Connor Schmigle and Taylor Hale expanded Tonne to a four-piece. Like last year’s debut, Subtract & Slide, Family & Me is in the sad-sack-NYC-post-punk mold, aligning snugly beside The National, Future Islands, and Turn on the Bright Lights-era Interpol. The band’s steady bass grooves and percussion serve as the backbone for droning-yet-melodious soundscapes, and Schmigle’s baritone inflection resembles your despondent Ian Curtis to my mumbling Matt Berninger (or vice versa — not really sure). It’s a tried-and-true formula, and it suits the band’s strengths well, as Subtract & Slide so adeptly demonstrated.
But as is the case with any fledgling act, making the leap from promising but rough around the edges to fully conceptualized talent is the sturdiest creative barrier Tonne will ever encounter. Family & Me — at just three songs and a hair over 12 minutes — probably wasn’t ever going to be that creative surge, instead serving as a reminder of the band’s promise and the work of four dudes whose best days are, in all likelihood, still ahead of them. Nothing here would sound out of place on their debut, and the highs that were attained on that record aren’t as prevalent — which, given the smaller sample size, isn’t all that surprising.
With its glacier-like pacing and subtle chord progressions, Tonne’s music requires a certain sense of patience; it’s restrained and at times reluctant to reveal the full extent of its beauty. Songs like “Quail” and “Newport” — the centerpieces of Subtract & Slide — are prime examples of the band letting its guard down mid-song and letting melody grab a foothold. The musical equivalent to a wet dream, these moments of musical discharge occur — not just for Tonne, but for any musician — when restraint begets tension and tension begets a release, slow-playing the listener in order to maximize the potency of a certain musical development. “Houses,” Family & Me’s final track, does this exceedingly well, with an instrumental latter half that doubles down on the hypnotic: warm synths suddenly begin to swarm, drums intensify, and an immersive bassline persists with confidence beneath all the static. It’s the EP’s clear apex, and a moment in which the band’s true potential shines through.
The other two songs on Family & Me, “Peg Fortune” and “Towers,” resemble neither a progression nor a regression, instead middling somewhere in between. It’s not so much a sense of disappointment by the release as a whole, but there’s a sense of stagnation that pervades two thirds of it. As a result, the record can hardly be classified as essential, especially given how Tonne already amply demonstrated how high its ceiling can be when it burst onto the scene last fall. Family & Me is just potential reiterated, an addendum to the precursor of what could be something great.
