I am the opposite of an amblyopiac. I have such
intense control over my eye muscles that I can move them independently of each
other, like a chameleon does. Now, I understand that you’re probably like,
“Ryan, is this one of your stupid review intros in which you make something up
and then let it veer off into nothingness by the end?” But this is not the
case. I can truly do this, and it freaks out everybody I show it to. If you
meet me in real life, reference this review and I’ll do my thing.
Tiger
Village’s Amblyopiac, the tenth
gall-dang album under Tim Thornton’s Tiger Village moniker, if you can believe
it, is an ode to the “kids in surgery,” a situation that amblyopia sometimes
(but not always) leads to. Commonly referred to as “lazy eye,” amblyopia “is a disorder of sight in which the
brain fails to process inputs from one eye and over time favors the other eye.
It results in decreased vision in an eye that otherwise typically appears
normal.” You know what someone with lazy eye looks like. It’s as if they’re not
quite looking directly at you when they’re speaking to you, because you don’t
know which eye to focus on. It can be unsettling, but that’s nothing compared
to how the amblyopiac likely feels – let’s try a little empathy, ok guys?
Maybe Amblyopiac
is an aural exploration of this phenomenon? Think of it this way: Tiger
Village pummels you throughout the album with abstract rhythmic experiments and
synth-pulse workouts, and it can be a challenge to hook onto a groove (not
saying that’s a necessary thing or anything, but bear with me). If in the
polyrhythmic onslaught the
brain favors one rhythm over another, gradually allowing the other’s
signals to weaken as it gets picked up, then the result would not be unlike the
identity Amblyopiac registers. That
everything comes off a bit … cockeyed? … is to Amblyopiac’s credit – there’s never less than full fascination or
the demand of full attention throughout its eight tracks.
Or maybe this whole thing is an album-length
meditation on the Silversun Pickups classic. Who am I to decide?
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