Nearly three years passed between me hearing Relationship of Command and Acrobatic Tenement. I was a little late to the At the Drive-In party as it was, so finding any of their albums wasn't trivial. I bought them in an unusual order: Relationship of Command, In/Casino/Out, the best-of, Acrobatic Tenement and then finally Vaya a full three years after the first. As the albums got reissued on vinyl, this was the last one I picked up, for no other reason than I didn't see any copies of it around until I found this one in Rough Trade; I was pleased to finally have all their albums on vinyl.
I was familiar with Initiation from the best-of album (where it is strangely wedged at the end of the otherwise chronological album, between two covers) when I bought the album on cd (a £2 bargain from eBay); the rest was all new to me. The most defining feature of Acrobatic Tenement is its scrappiness - the albums that would follow had much higher production value and generally better musicianship too. But I love this album for its less-rounded edges - it adds a lot of charm. There's also a jazz influence that the later albums don't have (take the end of Paid Vacation Time for example). Given that some of the band members would dabble in a wide variety of influences later on in their careers, it's nice to hear those moments in their earlier days too.
The album is also a much more basic variation on post-hardcore than their later albums would be - the songs here sometime remind me more of Sparta than they do ATD-I. There are exciting moments throughout the album - Starslight, Initiation, Communication Drive-In and Porfirio Diaz all have huge choruses and the first two make use of multiple singers in ways they would never really do as well - the lyrics on Starslight are basically unintelligible and I love that about it.
Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 11
Cost: £14 new
Bought: Rough Trade East
When: 25/10/14
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no
