There was a tooth in his mouth that bothered him. It felt heightened, somehow, harmonically unstable. He delayed going to the dentist for a long time, because he had no insurance, plus he was a smoker. He knew what the dentist would say: stop smoking; your teeth are garbage, etc. A few years later, after he got insurance and quit smoking, he went to the dentist to get his mouth checked out, get a cleaning, the works. ‘Bad news,’ the dentist said, about the tooth that had been bothering him, ‘this tooth is going through a change, I think your body is filling this tooth with little interior teeth.’ His tooth had a more interesting life than he did, he thought, it was still evolving, still becoming, still growing. He thought fondly of his tooth and its secret microteeth inside.
The new album from Rival Consoles (Ryan Lee West), “Articulation,” is composed of songs that start in one form and shift to another, songs that come disguised or arrive in a familiar form but contain unexpected information. “Forwardism” is a good example of what happens throughout “Articulation.” This starts as a pretty standard Rival Consoles song, something that would sound right at home on “Persona” or “Night Melody,” but right as “Forwardism” settles into what you think is a comfortable, chugging mix of delayed chords, hammered dulcimer, and crinkling percussion, the track turns into a digitized marching band, heard through a rotary telephone and decaying land lines from thousands of miles away. “Articulation” has a lot of invention in it, and it feels like West challenged himself to explore new ground and go beyond what he’d done before. It’s a great listen and the album has such a nice, compact arc.