Friday 9/4: Triathalon—"Garden 2"
Today, we share our thoughts on a new song by the alt-R&B band Triathalon.
Welcome to Endless Scroll, the brainchild of Eli Enis (he/him) and Eric Bennett (they/them). Since Feb. 2019, we’ve been a weekly podcast about music, the internet, and where those two things intersect. Now we’re, also a M-F newsletter about songs. Our format is simple: a link to a song and a short take from each of us about what we think of it. Each day of the week has a corresponding genre: Monday is indie, Tuesday is punk, Wednesday is hip-hop, Thursday is pop, and Friday is misc.
Triathalon—"Garden 2"
Eric Bennett:
Triathalon has long been the band I think took the most away from the Chillwave era and used its best parts to their advantage. They shave away the boredom inherent within it, keeping things interesting, but still relaxing. “GARDEN 2”, a single from their new album SLEEP CYCLE sounds and feels so much like a Crumb song that even bringing that up feels redundant. It has their jazz-influence, their pacing, and even captures the cinematic film noir eeriness that colors their catalog. “GARDEN 2” is an excellent song, but it doesn’t feel representative of the band. Perhaps they’re paying homage. Hopefully is that.
Eli Enis:
The Georgia-via-New York band Triathalon have been around since 2014, but my introduction to them was their 2018 single “Courtside”. That track has a really hooky guitar lick, humming synths, a warm drum machine loop, and gorgeously crooned vocals with just a touch of auto-tune. I think it’s a spectacular pop song and one that still pops in my head every now and then. Sadly, it doesn’t sound anything like the majority of SLEEP CYCLE, a 14-minute collection that falls into the nebulous “project” category for being seven songs (if you’re paying attention to the kids, that’s the sweet spot for this new era of non-albums) that mostly clock in under two minutes (perfect for TikTok, Twitter, IG, the works).
“GARDEN 2” was one of the singles from this thing, and honestly I couldn’t pick it out of a lineup of the drowsy chill-hop tunes that David Dean Burkhart endorses on YouTube. I don’t know if Triathalon are actually experimenting with gaming the algorithm and shortening their music for our broken attention spans, but I think this song (and most others on this record) suffers from its length: it’s not immediate enough to hook you within the first 20 seconds, but the song isn’t long enough to let it build into anything interesting. The band put out a collection of demos earlier this year, and outside of the competent mixing quality, this might as well be on there because it sounds super underdeveloped and boring to me. Sad, because I know this band can do better. But if you know anything about the popularity of “chill” YouTube stations, there’s an audience that eats this shit up like candy, so perhaps it’s just not for me.