June of 44

June of 44 have always struck me as the most workmanlike of the alleged post-rock movement; it’s made them both the most endearing and tedious of the lot. The fact that they also seemed to give it an honest effort could be much more palatable than the smirking pointy-headedness of their simpering fellow travellers, but damn, if they didn’t work their songs, and I mean work, leaving them poor, beleaguered, exhausted and threadbare by the time they finally ground to a halt. Happily, Anahata is their most satisfying outing to date, largely because they seem to have refocused their sweat and toil on writing songs — or riffs and motifs, to be more accurate. Threads of melodies drift along with insistent repetition, like fragmentary dreams that persist through nights of fitful sleep. Saying that June of 44 have suddenly become accomplished songwriters would probably be overstating the case, but they’ve achieved a level of hypnotic craftsmanship that actually gets better mileage than songs that cohere into neat packages.