Excerpts From Chapter 3 The Mind Runs A Net Of Rabbit Paths. Rats on Rafts

It has been quiet for some time around Rats on Rafts. After the duo album and shows with De Kift in 2016, I hadn't heard from the band, until a new album reached me late last year. And it did not land well. The loud noise second album, I bought at the De Kift duo show is not one I can play all of the time. I need to be in the mood to listen. Is that a feature I note that usually strikes me when listening to alternative rock bands from Rotterdam? I'm inclined to answer yes to that question.

Excerpts From Chapter 3 The Mind Runs A Net Of Rabbit Paths, an impossible title, sorry, did not exactly fit that mould, so at first I laid it away. Coming back to the album after the release date at the end of January, I started to hear a lot more in the album. The band is roughly six years older since the release of 'Tape Hiss' in 2015. The members have shed their wild hairs along the way and have found their inner 'Alladin Sanes' it seems. The result is a far more layered album or perhaps those layers were all hidden away under the noise not allowed to surface? The energy is still in a lot of the songs. At the same time air is allowed to whisk through the songs, making them less one dimensional than in the past.

This results in faint traces to early The Jam songs but also in experimental songs, hence the Bowie reference. I can understand that anyone expecting Rats on Rafts to continue where they left off, may well be deeply disappointed by Excerpts ... . But let's be honest, the same after six years would have been identical to inertia. David Fagan and band have made considerable progress or transition and because of it have in part become a different band, with at best traces of the band it once was.

Promo photo

All this makes Excepts ... a rather difficult album. I'm not exactly digesting it easily. What the album offers, is excitement. The excitement that comes with exploring. The outcome can still be disappointing, but isn't it more about the journey than the goal? It is exactly this element Excepts ... presents to its musically more adventurously inclined listeners. Along the way the traveller is presented with different views, tastes, palettes, in order to make up his mind what is of interest and what is not. Different emotions, rollercoasters and points of recuperation come by, creating a gesamt piece of musical art.

Excerpts From Chapter 3 The Mind Runs A Net Of Rabbit Paths is an album impossible to form an opinion on in just a few listening sessions. For that the impressions are too diverse. There are a few songs I instantly like, a few I have no place for and some in between. The latter will in the end decide where the album will land.

Despite the not knowing, this is a work of great experiment and braveness. Rats on Rafts has given this project its all and it shows. That is the point in art where masterpieces and great failures start. One thing stands out already, the former is closer than the latter.

Wo.

You can buy Excerpts ... here:

https://ratsonrafts.bandcamp.com/album/excerpts-from-chapter-3-the-mind-runs-a-net-of-rabbit-paths

or listen to our Spotify Playlist to find out what we are writing about:

https://open.spotify.com/user/glazu53/playlist/6R9FgPd2btrMuMaIrYeCh6?si=KI6LzLaAS5K-wsez5oSO2g