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photosUncut - November 2004 (More Deep Cuts)
"Clumsily named San Franciscans’ beautifully arranged second album
Despite the departure of co-writer Tadas Kisielus to Seattle midway through recording, More Deep Cuts finds Dee Kesler’s Thee More Shallows flexing their muscles far more than on their 2002 debut. A distillation of much of the last decade’s best US indie, it draws upon the likes of The Flaming Lips and Grandaddy’s Under The Western Freeway, melding these with more atmospheric meditative influences like Slint. Kesler’s softly spoken vocals provide a focus around which his songs blossom in an often euphoric fashon, and the inspired use of strings and toy pianos to flesh out the sound is never overstretched. Deeply addictive. (4/5)"
Eden Parke
Time Out - 29 September / 6 October 2004 (More Deep Cuts)
"The second LP from these San Franciscan collagists sees them veering off in a different direction than that plotted by their 2002 debut. Maybe it was the departure of songwriter Tadas Kisielius halfway through recording that did it, maybe not. Whatever, this is a thing of impossible beauty - sweet, fierce, fragile, funny, heavy, strangely skewed and independently-minded. It's Grandaddy, Elliott Smith, Queens of the Stone Age, Swell, the glitchy side of Sparklehorse, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Tortoise, kissed by neoclassical grace and grazed by white noise. It's goddamned gorgeous."
Sharon O'Connell
The Crack - October 2004 (More Deep Cuts)
"Initially washing over you, yet creating deeply ingrained strains as it goes, this 2nd long-player from San Franciscan trio Thee More Shallows slowly but surely slices its way under the skin. "More Deep Cuts" revels in psychedelic flavours with a bittersweet aftertaste, like a clinical Sparkelhorse riding to the dark patter of Tom Waits' mind. 50% sinister, 50% sensual, wholly, quietly, stunning."
Ian Fletcher
Rock Sound - October 2004 (More Deep Cuts)
"San Francisco’s Thee More Shallows reopen the avant-rock wound with a brooding melancholy beauty that points a finger vaguely in the direction of Sparklehorse and Yo La Tengo. Dee Kesler’s fragile vocal tremor provides a quiet corner to the band’s sinister and chaotic sonic epicentre where strings soar like menacing mosquitoes and a myriad of other orchestral instruments abound and assault the senses. Opening track ‘Post-Present’ betrays a disorientating analogue pulse before floating off into the deepest recesses of space. ‘Cold Dis’ continues along the eerie vein: a lone piano seemingly tinkled in a haunted house, while ‘Ave grave’ and ‘2AM’ swing to more twisted, upbeat and danceable heights. Fuelled by an excess of imagination and dizzying noise assault, ‘More Deep Cut’ is a remarkable, mercurial masterpiece."
Amy McGill (8/10)
Organ Magazine - 9 September 2004 (More Deep Cuts)
"ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Whoooosh, this is glowing, this is uplifting, this is an utter heartwarming treasure, this is one of the most beautiful set of songs for a long long time. More Deep Cuts is wonderful, More Deep Cuts is shiver after shiver up and down the spine glowing mellotron flavoured beauty from San Francisco. More Deep Cuts is an album that wraps you up in its sheer soothing glowing glorious beauty so so vibrant and unfolding and like the trees breaking out to green and the sun coming up and everything that's good about breathing. Thee More Shallows are far more than the sum of their flavours but let us just throw a few names in here and talk of Godspeed You Black Emperor and Granddaddy and Yo La Tengo, Map, Arab On Radar, Remy Zero and Mercury Rev..... Every song takes you a little step further, every new song is the best on the album until the one after it comes along. Magical strings and horns, More Deep Cuts just never stops glowing - it's delicate, it's restrained, it's beautiful, it's heartwarming (and yeah, I'm going over the top but I really couldn't care, we're talking about music here - this is why we do this, searching out the treasures that move us and excite us and invigorate us. If we can't get excited about wonderful things like this then there's no point in doing this Organ thing). Warm glowing harmonies, 'technicolour-blue vocal melodies'. Restrained Piano, French horns, glowing glowing orchestral strings, beautiful calm restrained chaos just so so compelling (have you worked out that we quite like it yet?). One of the most beautifully rewarding albums you'll hear this year do make the effort to find it, its special. www.theemoreshallows.com / www.monotremerecords.com"
Sean O
Tasty Fanzine - September 2004 (More Deep Cuts)
"When Thee More Shallows’ debut came out a few years ago, its delicate whimsy caused it to pretty much live in my CD player for a hell of a long time. Since then the wait for the follow up has seemed endless and nerve racking. Could they really manage to make an album that was as good as ‘A History of Sport Fishing’ again? So when the wait was finally over and a copy of the new album ‘More Deep Cuts’ arrived on my door mat, it was a good few days before I dared listen to it for fear of disappointment. As it turns out my fears were thankfully unfounded.
With ‘More Deep Cuts’ we have a collection of intelligent, thoughtful songs inflected with wit and poetry. Musically Thee More Shallows pour together strings, guitars and programmatic noises and beats to form what is some of the most absorbing music currently being made. What this record shows is that ‘A History of Sport Fishing’ was very much the beginning of what Thee More Shallows has to offer. The collection of songs present on ‘More Deep Cuts’ is truly an example of their best work to date. From the moment it begins with a bizarre gradually accelerating programmed beat you know this is different. Songs of paranoia, loneliness and mass graves are abound but they are each so beautifully conveyed you find yourself submerged in a hazy, contented state, and with ‘Freshman Thesis’ we have Thee More Shallows crowning glory so far. A song full of downtrodden bitterness that starts off whispering in your ear like a conspiracy you shouldn’t be part of, and ends in distorted pounding fuzz. The lyrics to this and every song always help to elevate the music as well. Just listen to the immaculate and minute observations present here and it is clear that you are in the presence of true storytellers.
I really can’t express how much I love this record. It serves as a document as to what everything about an album should be. A remarkable achievement."
Luke Drozd
Wallpaper - October 2004 (More Deep Cuts)
"San Francisco alt.rock has a unique aesthetic, one part beard and dungarees, one part feral skate punk. Thee More Shallows, now on to their second album, are coming through as one of the city’s most appealing bands. Their sound will appeal to fans of Sparklehorse or Grandaddy, with cracked vocals hovering over big strings and lush orchestrations that add a touch of grandeur to this introspective music. ‘I don’t have private thoughts, just a lyrical worksheet,’ sings Dee Kesler. So perhaps there’s a long-term project here."
Hari Kunzru
Sponic December 2002 (A History of Sport Fishing)
"This oddly-named group ties together the fragile emotional intensity of Low, the instant appeal and melodicism of Death Cab for Cutie, and a bevy of aquatic, unpredictable pop structures heavy on the orchestral side. They make it sound easy, hijacking the superlative facets of moody indie like Granddaddy but discarding the invariable self-indulgence. Riddling them with comparisons doesn’t do them justice, as shimmering and dark as their songs are … What Thee More Shallows really do is distill their pain and talent into a deceptively smooth and endlessly listenable package. It’s tranquil but insistent, like the tightly controlled asceticism of a former drug addict. A History of Sport Fishing has not left my CD player since the first listen, and I’m starting to think it never will."
John Wenzel - (rating: 4.5 / 5)
Uncut - October 2002 (A History of Sport Fishing)
"Spare, diverse, classically-tinged debut from San Francisco.
With Frisco-transplanted Midwesterners Dee and Tadas running the show, Thee Shallows’ [sic] songs describe guarded, lone innocents journeying through urban depravity. The vocals are murmuring and thin, like Scottish indie rock at its most spartan. But Dee’s classical training helps create unpredictable, expansive sonic swings that keep you listening, as on the almost anthemic I Do So Have A Sense Of Humor, where dour synths give way to a coda of sweet violins. Such imagination keeps the songs’ introversion from settling, building a restless ambience."
*** Nick Hasted
Mojo - July 2002 (A History of Sport Fishing)
"Absorbing debut from off-kilter duo and pals.
Recorded in a rehearsal space in San Francisco's Tenderloin, A History... is essentially the work of 'Frisco based couple Dee Kesler and Tadas Kisielius. A mature rendering of sensitive, guitar-based avant-rock, pitched somewhere between The Kingsbury Manx, Luna and Low, theirs is an understated but seductive debut. Opener, Where Are You Now? sets the tone; it's brooding rhythm, whispered vocals and insidious keyboards building to a sustained motorik plateau. The 8th Ring of Hell repeats the trick, seamlessly incorporating the sound of a super 8 camera. Variety arrives with Pulchritude's lovely baraque string arrangement and the title track's melting synths. But the highlight is the curious Ballad Of Douglas Chin, a lyrically abstruse (pimps/whores/laziness), but melodically memorable re-casting of Yo La Tengo-style folk rock intimacy. Engrossing."
David Sheppard
Time Out London 19-26 June 2002 (A History of Sport Fishing)
"Their name may sound like a line from Keats' 'Ode To Autumn', but San Francisco's Thee More Shallows had change forced upon them by a band called The Shallows, who apparently got there first and wouldn't share.
That name isn't the greatest, but it does chime perfectly with the title of their debut LP, a sweetly solipsistic, elegantly fluid thing which fails utterly to tell you how to tie a fly. Rather, chief Shallows Tadas Kisielius(m) and Dee Kesler(f) [sic] have - with the help of various inventive collaborators - cast their magic net and dredged up 11 melancholic lovlies, bedecked with piano, strings, accordion, glockenspiel, field recordings and experimental electronica. It's a deliciously dolourous blend of Flaming Lips (minus the mentalism), Yo La Tengo, Arab Strap, Low, A Silver Mount Zion and the fizzing mechanico-ambience and cracked vocals of Sparklehorse. Not a lot of laffs there, you're thinking. Well, no, but wry lines like 'the MC5 played "Staying Alive" in a basement room' (on 'Where Are You Now?') come at you quietly, and are hugely effective for that. Despite their fragility though, Thee More Shallows are far from polite; closer 'The Horizon Is A Single Point' is a slow-building, Neil Young-fronts-Mogwai-styled workout that's a fitting finale for a record of such soft-spoken strength. Still waters, as they say."
Sharon O'Connell
Get Rhythm June 2002 (A History of Sport Fishing)
"Thee More Misery would be more apt as these 'displaced' mid-westerners stare into space, looking for something to sing about. But as we have become wealthier, music of this ilk has become blues for rich kids who find tears and depression in a broken mobile phone. It's just so easy to say stuff like that. In a way the music of bands such as Mercury Rev, Sparklehorse and now Thee More Shallows is folk music for a generation. The music of Thee.. is not at all banal, they are extremely creative. Listen to the instrumental 'Pulchritude', it reminds me of the great Moondog. There's no doubting that 'A History of Sport Fishing' would be on the A-list of that great radio station we all dream about. Come to think of it, it's probably getting hammered on an internet station. Go broadband young man, get over 2,000 radio stations for nothing with RealPlay, and you can download it free! As for Thee...? If you like the above bands then you can buy this without fear."
CJ Holley
The Sunday Times 16 June 2002 (A History of Sport Fishing)
"For their song titles alone, this San Francisco duo deserve praise. Equally deserving is their music, which makes rewarding visits to territories previously inhabited by Sparklehorse and Death Cab for Cutie. Tadas Kisielius's tremulous voice just about musters the strength to swoon over a filigree of of finger-picked guitars and banjos, anchoring or cushioning organ and juxtaposing strings. Songs are allowed to spread themselves and chase their tails; so that, on The 8th Ring of Hell, a long guitar intro gives way to a hushed lovelorn lament, which in turn gives way to an extended finale that contains one of the loveliest chord progressions in recent memory. A similar indulgence allows I Do So Have a Sense of Humour to collapse into a disconcerting 5/4 loop of violins; or the instrumental Pulchritude to build a Glassish propulsion both ethereal and rather sinister. Very fine indeed."
Dan Cairns - 3 stars (out of 3)
The Times Saturday 15 June 2002 (A History of Sport Fishing)
"Numerous bands have mined the brooding alt-rock seam that was established by the likes of Sparklehorse and Grandaddy, but the San Franciscan duo Dee Kesler and Tadas Kisielius are worthy of their company. Their debut album has more abstract, drifting intentions than it's peers, but compensates for a lack of pointed hooks with a fog of pensive, blue-note beauty - instruments almost sound stroked, not played. There are songs nevertheless, especially I Do So Have a Sense of Humor, that not only crystalise that fuzzy, 3am state of mind, but send you home on an exquisite cushion of strings."
Martin Aston - 4 stars
Careless Talk Costs Lives June/July 2002 (A History of Sport Fishing)
"The siren call of Godspeed extends to San Francisco, and beyond."
Everett True
Sleaze Nation May 2002 (A History of Sport Fishing)
"Skew-whiff pop with pursed lips, fractured San Franciscans deliver muted, clipped delights that tread a wayward path through the recent history of American indie's most precious moments."
Stevie Chick
Shredding Paper (A History of Sport Fishing)
"Turning down the volume knob has become a woefully easy crutch for bands who strive to be taken seriously. Somehow, stillness became perceived as skillfulness, and a whole generation of sole-staring slowcore acts started occupying stages and rudely demanding everyone settle down and witness their importance. And it could have been easy for Thee More Shallows to fall into the same trap, but "A History of Sport Fishing" adeptly sidesteps these pratfalls and instead delivers a work of startling beauty and grace. The furiously swelling strings on Pulchritude act as introit to the gauzy title track, a song that is all misty with keyboards and soft hi-hat. When Dee Kesler's cracked voice finally enters nearly halfway through the song's seven minutes it sounds like a voice whispering from beyond death. "A History of Sport Fishing" is full of moments like this -- the skeletal arpeggios in "Aerodrome," the Slowdive drone of "I do So have a Sense of Humour," the twinkling guitars that dot "He Hate Me" like tiny constellations. And while "A History of Sport Fishing" doesn't offer any stunning singles, as a work of atmosphere and form it is practically flawless."
J. Edward