While Martin's skills and arrangements are impressive, many of these songs have so many movements within them that their overall intentions can get lost. Rather than evolving with the same instruments they start with, instead new instruments crossfade into the mix to form different sections and take the song somewhere new. Even though these new sections are often equal to or better than the parts they're replacing, this constant shifting of themes and instrumentation never quite allows the listener to gain a comfortable foothold. A good example of this is "Tire Swing," one of my favorites on the album. The first half starts with a piercing pitch and vibrato strings before morphing into an elegant dirge for the second half. The latter part is much more interesting but the parts are divided so equally that it sounds more like two unrelated sections that are fused together rather than a tension-building intro that leads into the main body. Almost every song does something like this at least once if not more, and the result is a somewhat choppy, disconnected listening experience rather than the meditative one it could have been.
Martin is clearly very talented, and the music here is often captivating and gorgeous. Too much reliance on seemingly arbitrary changes keeps River Water just shy of being a transcendent recording.
Read More
