EP REVIEW: Shaw - Learning To Ride A Bike
“Is this thing on?”
I remember the first time I tried to learn how to ride a bike. It was a windy afternoon in Rizal, the clouds occasionally obfuscating the sun as it follows the direction of the wind as its gentle presence collides with me and my playmates. We all had bikes that day, staring down the long road headed towards the local parish. Now would usually be the time when I would recall how my friends and I sped down past the slope with our bikes while sepia seeps through the screen, but that wasn't the case. I tried to pedal forward but I kept falling over and landing on the warm pavement, despite my prayers. Soon after repeated attempts and different ways of approaching the bike I had given up, resigning to just stare down the road in stasis. In a way, this EP is the musical equivalent of my experience: static and quite honestly unremarkable.
“Learning to Ride a Bike” is the first EP released by Shaw, a math rock trio that formed by the tail end of 2014. They have been playing numerous gigs around the Metro, gaining traction due to their more digestible take on instrumental math rock, similar to how Tom’s Story makes accessible post-rock. Contained in these four tracks are three instruments that sound clean, the band’s acceptable technical ability showing at key points in the most subtle way possible. Nuance is the name of the game for these guys, seeing as how they play off each other as one singular unit, playing in unison as the songs carry on. Aside from having commendable chemistry, it also helps that the EP is well produced. All these elements show that Shaw has the capacity to make good music, but sadly, the songwriting singlehandedly guts the technical aspects of the entire EP.
Right off the bat, the first track “Alon” graces the viewer with its lush bass and the accompanying atmospheric guitar riff. However, the problems of the EP show after that 30 second passage, problems that persist all throughout the four tracks. All the segments feel disconnected, as if the band was just running through a bullet points of math rock tropes. There’s no sense of progression to be heard; any instrumental “buildup” is either cut short by another distant section, or a resolution is placed too early for either to have any effect on the listener. The lack of atmosphere carries over to the next track, “Learning to Ride a Bike”. As stated before in the previous track review, every passage feels obligatorily placed. Shaw kept adding these moments to a song because they can, not stopping to think whether they should. “Dried Tangos” and “Monumento” are more of the same, but longer. The only difference being that most of the singular instrumental segments themselves are uninteresting when viewed in isolation. “Dried Tangos” highlights the problems further. The song is a lush but incoherent 6 minute listen, trying to sound like a highlight reel of every influential math rock song rather than having a definite atmosphere. “Monumento” is the more coherently written track of the collection, but it proves to lean more on being “boring” than “messy”. What’s frustrating is that the tremolo-picked guitar at the 4:14 mark could have been a nice way to end a much better song. Instead, its impact gets wasted by being placed at the midway point of “Monumento”.
Overall, this EP is nondescript. For an EP about bike riding, it’s ironic how literally no distance was covered. Or you could see it from a deeper perspective and realize that the title of the EP is perfect for the four tracks contained in it. Learning how to ride a bike the first time around is frustrating. You keep stopping, falling over or abruptly turning at the wrong direction. And in the end, you get nowhere despite having the vehicle, the potential, to move forward and cover a great distance. That’s Shaw with “Learning to Ride a Bike”