Boards of Canada misses its own high mark

Mike Newmark Assistant Arts Editor

After 2000’s Music Has The Right To Children, Boards of Canada could have laid their equipment down for good. Rarely has a debut been so cogent at expressing what it set out to express, which explains why their darker follow-up, Geogaddi, received less praise than it frankly deserved. Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin must have picked up on that; dismayed at Geogaddi’s knee-jerk critical interpretation as “evil” and “sinister,” they seem to have treated The Campfire Headphase as a regression into the green fields of their debut. Heck, the covers are practically identical.

The Campfire Headphase heavily references Music’s disorienting electronic weirdness, but there are a few key differences. The album marks the first appearance of guitars that actually sound like guitars, and about half the songs feature the instrument, whether backgrounded (“Satellite Anthem Icarus”) or foregrounded (“Hey Saturday Sun”). The eerie vocal samples that graced the first two albums have vanished. All of the instruments are louder and sharper than ever; even the fuzz on “Dayvan Cowboy” rings with crystalline clarity. The result is an album that’s confrontational but not challenging, pretty but not dreamy, focused but not realized. In other words, it’s an above-average Electronica album, but an A-minus doesn’t quite suffice when you’ve already received an A-plus.

Extensive production has always been a Boards of Canada hallmark, but only here does their music actually sound produced, as opposed to naturally flowing. “Oscar See Through Red Eye,” among other skittering mini-opuses, is brimming with melodies that percolate and intersect, but it’s simply too busy, and the many parts don’t add up to much. After all, more ingredients do not necessarily make a better stew.

I suppose I’ve fallen into the critic’s trap by comparing the band’s newest release with their remarkable earlier work, because on its own, The Campfire Headphase is fine listening. Many songs here are sparkling, complex, and quite lovely. Furthermore, the introduction of guitars adds a vaguely rockish dimension to their genre-bending sound. But the band has also fallen into a trap, and a rather common one: it’s been a bit too long (three and a half years since Geogaddi) and they’ve raised the bar a bit too high. As it stands, The Campfire Headphase is Boards of Canada’s most conventional and least awe-inspiring album to date.