Review: Half Empty Glasshouse – Restricted Repetitive Behavior: An Experiment in Application of Classical 12-Tone Technique to Contemporary Post-Punk Composition

Style: post punk, Modernism (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Arnold Schoenberg; Black Midi; Black Country, New Road; HMLTD; Oingo Boingo
Review by: Andy
Country: New Zealand
Release date: 27 October 2023

Restricted Repetitive Behavior: An Experiment in Application of Classical 12-Tone Technique to Contemporary Post-Punk Composition. What the HECK is that. Listen, I like Modernism a bit more than the next guy and have a very high tolerance for Postmodernism, but how can a band earnestly release an album with that title? Quite effectively if you’re Half Empty Glasshouse. I exercise my rights to bring you all progressive but not prog™ music, frequently fighting with my boss and peers here about what prog is spiritually: I won the battle with Schoenbergian post punk. 

For those of you who aren’t well-versed in 20th century classical music, twelve tone serialism is a way of composition where you cycle through the twelve chromatic notes without emphasizing one to create a distinct atonality—or as I prefer to call it: a pantonality—since there is no tonal center. The band explains their explicit methods more on their Bandcamp, but for the layman it’s enough to know that it’s conceptually difficult to compose and that it’s even more challenging to write engrossing music. Half Empty Glasshouse stick to their schtick admirably, the guitars almost uniformly staying within these “tone row” restrictions while the vocals and bass have a bit more melodic freedom to create a listenable final product. Using these serial techniques of composition, the band actually writes some remarkable music. For instance, “Confidential Neuropsychological Evaluation” balances wild atonal guitar parts with wavery 80s goth vocals to forge a distinctly absurd scene replete with an ironic nihilism from the lyrics such as on the first track: “This diagnosis has been a long time coming / Walk out of the clinic like a jackpot lottery winner / Just needed a little confirmation of what I’ve known deep down all along / From someone with a PhD.”

Speaking of, the lyrics grab me much more than they would on a usual album since they’re the only aspect of Restricted Repetitive Behavior to grab onto completely. Particularly with the relaxed but zany energy of post-punk vocal performance, the lyrics are often hilarious and thought provoking: “I’m a foreigner in my home country / I’m an alien in the wrong galaxy / I’m a land animal and I’m lost at sea / I’m an android in a tribe of chimpanzees.” They’re a perfect blend of absurdism and post-punk deranged nihilism. Perhaps my favorite lyrics are on the insanely titled “Bill Buckner Syndrome & Maladaptive Obsession with Statistics,” which philosophically rambles through one of baseball’s most infamous occurrences for eight minutes. The peculiarity of topic and verbiage throughout complement the wackiness of the twelve-tone technique, tying the whole album together. 

Just as I feared when I saw the album title, though, at times Half Empty Glasshouse go a bit too far over the line between Modernism and Postmodernism, perhaps inappropriately abusing this tonal system without the prerequisite experience to pull off. First, nearly every track ends with a twelve-tone piano solo, and that disappoints me honestly—I’d like to hear the band either use that texture in their post punk or not include it, but I feel it breaks the immersion of their experiment. Notably, I also think that the post punk lacks a bit of the manic energy the genre necessitates, and the serialism sounds a tad lethargic for genre standards. Most importantly, though, I think that to truly pull off Modernism requires a great deal of relevant historical and cultural context, and as the band is anonymous, I can only guess from listening this is more of a textbook experimentation rather than an appropriately ready one. I never want to gatekeep experimentation, but I think more practice at the style is necessary before Half Empty Glasshouse can release a masterpiece. Hence, I consider this Postmodern more than Modern; the band skipped right through the garde rather than going through it.

All told, Restricted Repetitive Behaviors is extremely promising. Schoenbergian post-punk is absolutely possible—the proof of concept is here—and only a couple things need to be tweaked. Half Empty Glasshouse were right on the money noticing that the absurdity and experimentation inherent in the recent wave of progressive post punk would blend well with the tone row, and I applaud their efforts.

Recommended tracks: Confidential Neuropsychological Evaluation, The Sociolinguistics of Group Identification, Bill Buckner Syndrome & Maladaptive Obsession with Statistics
You may also like: Blotted Science, Ron Jarzombek
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp

Label: independent

Half Empty Glasshouse is:
– Anonymous