Tortoise Touch

Critic's Take

Tortoise have never been a hurry-up band, and Touch finds them luxuriating in widescreen instrumental rooms while still surprising you. The review circles the best tracks - “Night Gang”, “Axial Seamount” and “Vexations” - praising the panoramic spaghetti-western sweep of the closer, the electrifying motorik of "Axial Seamount", and the opener's broad vistas. Callum's voice is measured and slightly wry, noting how quieter pieces like “Layered Presence” and “Works and Days” can feel inert before revealing darker turns. Ultimately the record thrills in patches; it is shorter and more restrained than expected, but those highlights make repeated listens feel necessary.

Key Points

• The best song, "Night Gang", is best for its sprawling, anthemic guitar-and-synth line and panoramic feel.
• The album's core strengths are its cinematic instrumental landscapes, confident pacing, and successful experiments with motorik and digital textures.

Themes

Critic's Take

Tortoise's Touch is threaded with serrated restlessness and occasional widescreen calm, and the best tracks - notably “Vexations” and “Night Gang” - illustrate that tension. The reviewer leans into the album's noisy, unstable textures, praising how “Promenade à deux” eases into a classic Tortoise chill-out while “A Title Comes” finds cinematic balance. Those moments make clear which are the best songs on Touch: opener “Vexations” for its clipped, metallic groove and closer “Night Gang” for its anthemic, moving payoff. Overall, the record is less comforting than earlier work, but its second-half sweep rewards patient listening.

Key Points

• “Night Gang” is the best song for its anthemic finale and emotional payoff.
• The album’s core strengths are its textural noise, cinematic second-half sweep, and patient, rewarding moments.

Themes

Critic's Take

In this review Stephen Deusner hears a revitalized Tortoise on Touch, a record that makes the case for the best songs on Touch being the slyly cinematic “Promenade À Deux” and the motorik propulsion of “Axial Seamount”. He writes with the same measured enthusiasm that threads through the review - noting how these tracks marry groove and wonder - and positions them as the clearest examples of the band reconciling their past with a brisk, contemporary scene. The prose emphasizes playfulness and precision, so readers asking "best tracks on Touch" will find “Promenade À Deux” and “Axial Seamount” singled out for emotional specificity and streamlined momentum. Overall the narrative frames Touch as a comeback that reconnects Tortoise to Chicago's vibrant improv and jazz renewal, producing some of the album's most rewarding moments.

Key Points

• “Promenade À Deux” is the best song because it combines a loping bassline with cinematic intimacy that pins acute, unnamed feelings.
• The album's core strengths are its playful exploration of grooves and precise, edited arrangements that bridge post-rock with Chicago's revived jazz and improv scene.

Themes

Critic's Take

Tortoise return with Touch, an album whose best songs - notably Axial Seamount and Works and Days - showcase the band’s gleaming motorik and quietly intricate interplay. The reviewer's voice finds that time and distance have not diluted their chemistry, and the way "Axial Seamount" balances clockwork precision with jam spontaneity makes it one of the best tracks on Touch. Likewise, the rewarding patience of Works and Days reveals shifting tempos and harmonic variation only after several listens, marking it as a standout. Overall the album is presented as a measured success for a band still refining texture and timing.

Key Points

• The best song, "Axial Seamount," is best for marrying precise motorik rhythms with live spontaneity.
• The album's core strengths are the band's enduring chemistry and subtly complex interplay that rewards repeated listens.

Themes

Critic's Take

Tortoise have never been fond of flash, and on Touch that patience yields rewards - the best tracks on Touch are where history and forward motion meet. You can hear it in “Oganesson” reaching back to bebop and dub, and in “Axial Seamount” drifting into kosmische radiance, but it is the finale “Night Gang” that feels like the album's true summit. Grayson Haver Currin writes with a steady admiration, noting how the band stitches spaghetti western guitars, sophisticated drums and celestial textures into a most self-possessed post-rock moment. The wait, rewarded, he concludes, and those three tracks - especially “Night Gang” - are where listeners will find the album's richest returns.

Key Points

• The best song is “Night Gang” because it synthesizes Tortoise’s signature elements into a self-possessed finale.
• The album's core strengths are its balance of continuity and exploration, blending electronics, rhythm, and kosmische textures.

Themes

Critic's Take

Eric Hill finds the best songs on Touch to be the mid-album gem Promenade à deux, the cinematic A Title Comes, and the lead single Oganesson. He writes with a measured, appreciative tone that foregrounds the band's rhythmic evolution and knack for juxtapositions - praising how "Promenade à deux" builds atop a low-bass rumble into an orchestral centerpiece. The narrative emphasizes how the band still clicks disparate tempos and textures into cohesive organisms, making these tracks the standout moments on Touch.

Key Points

• "Promenade à deux" is the standout for its orchestral build, instrumentation and mallet work, earning it the reviewer’s highest praise.
• The album's core strengths are rhythmic evolution and skillful juxtapositions of electronics, guitars and percussion, which make disparate elements cohere.

Themes

Critic's Take

Tortoise's Touch arrives like a band arriving late to its own conversation, its best tracks - notably Rated OG and Layered Presence - offering flashes of the old inventiveness even as the record often feels grey and disjointed. Levi Dayan writes with wry disappointment, praising the dry, heavy drum-driven tension of Rated OG and the harpsichord-esque whim of Layered Presence, while faulting the antiseptic production that reduces other moments to mush. The opening swagger of Vexations and the stoic groove of Axial Seamount are noted as intriguing, but the overall lack of group chemistry keeps Touch from coalescing into a fully satisfying record.

Key Points

• ‘Rated OG’ is the best song, singled out as the album highlight for its drums and claustrophobic tension.
• The album’s core strengths are moments of inventiveness and groove, undermined by antiseptic production and diminished chemistry.

Themes

Critic's Take

Tortoise have fashioned Touch into a patient, cinematic record where the best songs - notably Works and Days and Oganesson - reveal the band’s knack for suspenseful, filmic textures. Jim Hynes’s prose dwells on the album’s layered production and instrumental swaps, arguing that tracks like Vexations and Promenade a deux are prime examples of their soundtrack bent. The review emphasizes that the sequencing rewards whole-album listening while spotlighting these standout cuts as the best songs on Touch for mood and rhythmic invention.

Key Points

• The best song(s), such as "Works and Days" and "Oganesson," stand out for rhythmic invention and cinematic suspense.
• The album’s core strengths are layered, cinematic production and inventive instrumental interplay born from a patient, geographically dispersed process.

Themes

Critic's Take

Tortoise's Touch pads its electronic edges without losing the group's slow-burn inventiveness, and the best songs on Touch reward patient listening. The reviewer's eye lands first on “Axial Seamount” as the album's zenith, a motorik extrapolation that quickens into spine-tingling territory. Equally notable are “Elka”, billed as a girthy techno banger made in real time, and “Promenade à deux”, a sonically rich soufflé of ambivalent melodies and crispy synth riffs. These tracks exemplify why the best tracks on Touch feel both meticulously crafted and vibrantly alive.

Key Points

• The best song is "Axial Seamount" because the reviewer calls it the album's zenith and praises its spine-tingling motorik development.
• The album's core strengths are its electronic textures, metallic percussion, and careful evolution of the band's sound.

Themes