Eluvium’s “Similes,” A Restful Void

My first listen of Eluvium’s new record was interrupted barely five minutes in, when I fell asleep.

To my credit, Similes is an impenetrable, arrhythmic fog. Matthew Cooper, the man behind the moniker, has a track record of ambient releases, a genre born in the space between transcendent and tedious.

Brian Eno, the musician widely credited for the creation of ambient, once wrote that the music “is intended to induce calm and a space to think.” In this context, Similes rushes to buy wallpaper and curtains before building a doorframe. Cooper, an obvious member of the Pro Tools generation, squanders fine-tuned production on half-hearted song fragments.

Still, Cooper knows the trappings of ambient music: soft tones, innocuous chords, slow tempos and no singing. He violates that last rule for the first time on Similes, but does so timidly by burying his tuneless mutter low in the mix. He should have known better.

He also should have known that chaining Similes to a single mood would trap the record inside its own murky aesthetic. These are drones, not songs. Repeating the same progression for 11 minutes (“Cease to Know”) is no longer experimental – it’s lazy and it leaves little room for evolution or enjoyment.

Even more constrictive is Cooper’s reliance on piano and back-masked guitar, which lays a soggy foundation for every song on Similes. “If the colors and the shapes were clearly more defined,” he sings in the finale, a condition he would do well to indulge.

Sadly, of all the emotions the record strains to evoke, the only apparent one is disappointment. Deep yearning should lead to action, and this is Cooper’s problem: his voice is all welled tears and no balled fists. Only a child could enjoy this sort of sad indulgence.

The result is a piece of music unsuitable for active listening. Ironically, Similes is a soundtrack to its own failure.