Sometimes, Why not? just isn’t a suitable response; similarly, eclecticism is not always a virtue. Although bands like Between the Buried and Me and the late, great Silencio have exploited that sort of attention-defecit-disorder multi-genre clusterfuck style to its greatest potential, such a style of music requires much more skill to write than might at first be apparent. Even when these bands decide to go ahead and throw even the kitchen sink into the mix, there is always an underlying reason, some sort of modus operandi laying the ground work for what might superficially seem to be nothing more than sonic chaos. Harsh dissonance; disruption of the norm; exploitation of the listener’s expectations: these are all perfectly good reasons for the abrupt shifts found in this sort of music. But when, as a critical listener, I must ask the question Why? of an album, and recieve only Why not? in return, then serious problems begin to emerge. Unfortunately, such a response is quite typical of Tiny Fragments, the debut EP from Western Australia’s Tangled Thoughts of Leaving.

Tiny Fragments contains two songs: an eighteen-minute, three-piece monster of a title track that was composed almost entirely in the studio, and an older track, "The Banshee," which is said to be a favorite of their live show. From the very beginning we are treated to abrupt shifts in style, ranging from post-rock to jazz to metal and all of the sub-genres contained within. At times the music can approach brilliance: my first listen to the first 30 seconds of "Tiny Fragments" had me quite assured that I had been gifted the next Dead Kings to review. But every instance of such brilliance – and, to be fair, there are quite a few – will be almost immediately countered by an annoying, unneccesary, Jesus Christ why the hell would you do that? moment of a type I have not encountered for some time. Case in point: most of the first part of "Tiny Fragments" is pretty damn solid. It founders a bit, to be sure, but it remains engaging and interesting for five lovely minutes. Then, out of nowhere, and at the only place on the entire album, Tangled Thoughts of Leaving reveal that they have a singer who’s probably listened to Lamb of God just a bit too much. Who knew? Where did this come from? The singing is so entirely without a purpose that it almost completely destroys the general goodwill the song had built up prior to this dreadful moment.

In certain way, I loathe to bring up these comments against Tangled Thoughts of Leaving, because I really feel as though there is a lot of potential in this band. As previously noted, "Tiny Fragments“ was recorded in a largely improvised manner, and this could be the cause of most of the problems which I have with the song. Pieces of the style that Tangled Thoughts of Leaving write need to have some sort of thought-out base plan in order to succeed, and that is extraordinarily difficult to do while constantly improvising off into the stratosphere. Improvization is an important and neccesary portion of the writing process for this schizophrenic manner of music, but if it is not grounded in a central pre-existing goal, then the music can easily wander off and begin to sound pointless.

Secondary to that point is the difference between playing music live and playing music for a studio-recording. As a young band who places great emphasis on their live show, I worry that perhaps Tangled Thoughts of Leaving made the mistake of assuming that what works in front of a cheering audience will also succeed in the de-personalized realm of the Compact Disc. Unfortunately, the two oftentimes do not coincide. The improvizational manner of the music and of the recording is also at odds with the production, which seems to have been intensive and heavy-handed, to go by the band’s comments on their myspace page. In my opinion, such a labored production process must have hurt their sound terribly.

Despite the overall negative tone of this review, and the score placed at the top of the page, I would like to emphasize once more that I feel this band is truly much better than this record. Although Tiny Fragments never manages to incorporate its many strengths into some sort of percievable whole, anyone with ears can plainly tell that with a little dose of planning, this band will be dynamite. And, to look at the newer song versus the older on this EP, it would seem that the band is steadily improving. Tiny Fragments, as it would turn out, is a very well-named record indeed, for that is what we are given: tiny fragments of greatness; regretably, nothing more. Could Tangled Thoughts of Leaving truly deliver the next Dead Kings to us? Certainly. Perhaps even probably. But they have not yet.

-Tom Butcher