I’ve gone to far greater lengths for much less promise, you’ll have to trust me on this one, so I got a little jazzed upon hearing the first minute of the Roots of Orchis' Crooked Ceilings. The first track, “Anyway You Flee”, starts off with some subtly mixed open cymbals and then slowly fades into the same cymbal sound sans nifty computer or turntable effect. My inner monologue instantly began pre-game pep talking, “That was really smart. Maybe we are really onto something here.” As per usual, my expectation usually gives way to some sort of purgatorial middle ground. There are definitely mediocre and worse moments, but this album transcends mediocrity on more than one occasion, allowing me to stilt my ailing respect for my own snap judgments.

The label’s press release touts this album as being reminiscent of DJ Shadow and Tortoise. While my general fascination with these artists has definitely waned in recent years, besides a sharp upward spike of adoration the month after the release of Private Press, I still find this combination intriguing; not James Bond in Monte Carlo intrigue, but more shrewd, like a friend who can fix his own lawnmower. This grand comparison is appropriate and musically matched at times. I am full aware that the label talking heads have got to pique interest, but creating these kinds of expectations is mixing a dangerous cocktail of potential disappointment.

“Anyway You Flee” in many ways fulfills the marquee’s promise. The disjoint beats, broken down rhythms, and droning organs definitely draw you into Crooked Ceilings. Roots of Orchis successfully creates a brooding and intellectual mood reminiscent of smoky basements and socialist politics, albeit with borderline copycat Tortoise base riffs. “Hypoxia” has more of the same combo. This doesn’t come off as a Shadow rip off, but it does seem a little too well informed. I’ve got to imagine that if Tortoise or any of the Thrill Jockey lackeys covered Organ Donor, it’d sound like this. Roots of Orchis rips a play straight out of the God Speed Playbook on “A Talon for the Flywheel”. With orchestral crescendos and trap door climaxes, this band is at its best when it sounds most familiar and referential. Using a duplicitous metaphor (as I have stolen this entire bit out of one of my friend’s comedic repertoires), if you are going to rip off a trick play, steal it out of Spark Anderson’s playbook.

I could hardly fault familiarity. Paraphrasing some long deceased Russian, all happy families are happy the same way, but all fucked up families are fucked up in their own way. When Roots of Orhis is at its most unique is when they sound their weakest. There are definitely moments when this album comes off as killing time waiting for monkeys to type Shakespeare. These moments of monkey mayhem are not all that flattering, but heck, at least they aren’t smearing their own feces on the gear and trying to hump any press affiliates.

My general impression of the album is mixed, but in the end on the affirmative side of the fence. The paint drying on the walls occasions, which I suspect were devised as something to placate archaic techies living in mom’s basement with their King Crimson albums and crushed hopes of marrying Joan Jett, usually have a payoff making the wait a bit more worthwhile.