Ui: Lifelike

The funny thing about so-called "post-rock" is that for all its esoteric experiments, many bands lumped under that amorphous header sound awfully similar. Perhaps that's because so much of the music, from Tortoise to Labradford, is essentially soulless, the inevitable result of too much studio tomfoolery. For about half of Ui's new album Lifelike, the trio exhibits enough variety and funky energy to escape the pull of the post-rock black hole. "Drive Until He Sleeps," "Blood In The Air," and "Digame" even exude a certain playful hip-hop vibe, while "Undersided" and "Green Of The Melon" strike a nice balance between ambient music and jazzy improv. But what starts out fine (if not exceptional) soon descends into the predictable two-basses-and-a-drummer noodling that seems to eventually hamper half the bands in the post-rock camp. While Wilbo Wright and Sasha Frere-Jones are talented multi-instrumentalists, and Clem Waldmann is a fine drummer, Lifelike never sounds like more than what it is: a studio construct, pieced together from various sessions. Lifelike is right, because no one would accuse these instrumental pieces of being too warm or fuzzy. Just because you plant the seeds doesn't mean something is going to grow, and if Ui wants to rise above the rabble, it needs to cultivate its musical crop a bit more.