Character

Character plays a little bit of everything on its 49-minute debut album (which follows a 33-minute debut EP, 2002's A Flashing of Knives and Green Water). There isn't much of a track record for a purely instrumental rock band, except for such anomalies as the danceable, twangy guitar style of the Ventures and the spacey sounds of Tangerine Dream, but Character seems intent on creating a new paradigm, largely through eclecticism. Skip around the disc, and you will hear slow, ponderous passages, up-tempo guitar rock, and ambient sounds played on the theremin that recall the brainy background music of Brian Eno. Sometimes, you'd think you were listening to the soundtrack album from a low-budget science fiction film of the 1960s, sometimes to the middle passage from a long Pink Floyd song. Other moments, you might think you were just hearing the instrumental break in a conventional rock tune. Character keeps things lively by changing styles, tempos, and instrumentation, not only from one tune to another but during individual tracks. The result is a lot of little pieces of music, some striking and others ordinary, that, probably intentionally, don't add up to anything more than the cumulative experience of having listened to them. The band started out as a side project for the musicians, and although it now has become a more important aspect of their careers, it retains the quirky nature of a busman's holiday, pleasant but not particularly significant. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide