TOMAN

— First review of this album —

It looks like Tomàn is very concerned for the bear's diet, the salmon's condition and the Canadian wildlife in general. Might I suggest our favourite Flemish group to dare moving out to the Great White North so they can sate their Canadian nature syndrome? Indeed I don't really care whether the salmon is smoked and it wouldn't make a difference to the grizzly bear of their previous album, he'd eat it without noticing the difference..Anyway, Toman are giving us a course on smokeable salmons & trouts on their cardboard sleeve album. Whether their pre-occupations and artwork envies are in line with their music is a pertinent question, though.

That's the beauty of post rock, you can have it say the dumbest and most seemingly useless thing into, it takes on a different dimension, but the fish or bear theme don't seem to be a primordial inspiration through their song titles but the summer theme (fishing season) certainly is. 8 tracks, ranging from xxx to yyy, filled with relatively quiet post rock, again in the GYBE! mode, at times sung, Tomàn's post rock doesn't differ much from the better known groups. You won't find much to differentiate Tomàn from the dozens of band offering such music, though.

BTW: Toman boys I don't smoke salmon, only good grass. easier to roll.

— First review of this album —

First album from the Flemish group Tomàn, Catching A Grizzly Bear boasts a very sleek and attractive artwork, including some kind of petrodinnar AND the first lesson on how to achieve the album's title. Whether they already knew the answer would lead to their follow-up albums is unknown, but it definitely seems that the Ghentenaars (that's what the people og Ghent call themselves) should actually try to tour western Canada to saturate their curiosities. In either case, Tomàn develops the usual post-rock but seem intent on singing some songs, which is not that good an idea since the singer's pronunciation and accent are very much perfectible. As is I'm afraid the overall sound of the album. In the now-vast choice of pos rock records, which seem pretty well all exchangeable, given the genre-wide aural spectrum, I guess Tomàn's debut album holds very little arguments to find a spot in your helves, mainly because it's very much amateurish, except maybe in the artwork dept.