Tanker

Tanker is unique in Bailter Space’s career not just for its line-up – it’s their only full album with The Clean’s Hamish Kilgour on drums – but for the way it acts as a hinge between the monolithic post-punk of Alister Parker and John Halvorsen’s former band, The Gordons, and their newer, more melodic side. Parker’s guitar on songs like “Grader Spader” still proves his ability to corral chaos into precision, but the walls of noise here are less dense, and on “Glass” and “Titan”, the interplay is more spacious and meandering. It has an appealingly tentative quality to it, as though Parker and Halvorsen are finding their feet again. They’d make better albums in the future, but none of those would be quite so exploratory.

Following the initial Nelsh Bailter Space EP and a couple of subsequent singles, Bailter Space’s first full album sessions began pulling the pieces of the Gordons back together, with members Hamish Kilgour and Alister Parker joined by John Halvorsen and, on engineering duties this time out, Brent Maclachlan. The resultant Tanker has cool beauty and stark power in equal measure, frazzled guitar explosions like “Grader Spader” and “Your Invisible Life” matched by the understated swing and pulse of “Glass,” “Titan” and the strange beauty of “The Today Song.”