Pall Jenkins’ very distinct vocal sounds world-weary and forlorn on The Inevitable Past Is The Future Forgotten, Three Mile Pilot‘s first album in 13 years. Perhaps better known for his work with The Black Heart Procession, the twinning of dark themes of love and loss with a post-9-11 Orwellian vision of society which Jenkins explored on recent albums The Spell and last year’s Six are taken a few steps further here, and there’s certainly no attempt to hide the gloom:

“Bury yourself with their machines (they take control away)

they’re processed to love you through their

I don’t understand why we trust them (they take control away)

We’re all alone in this battle”

Opening song ‘Battle’ reflects some of the band’s struggles and acts as a touchstone for the rest of the album, but the songs on The Inevitable sound bitterly disappointed in the world and provide few clues why the influential 90s San Diego post-rock trio chose this time to release their follow-up to 1997′s well-received Another Day, Another Sea. Side projects certainly pushed Three Mile Pilot out of the frame, bassist Zach Smith and drummer Tom Zinser busied themselves with Pinback and other bands while the Black Heart Procession became Jenkins’ mainstay along with Tobias Nathaniel, who joins the band again for their latest album. Apart from a compilation CD in 2000, there were few signs Three Mile Pilot would actually play together again, until some impromptu live appearances and a tour in 2009, followed by an announcement by record label Temporary Residence, slightly phased, that an album would follow. Far from dead and buried, Three Mile Pilot have in fact returned fully formed and seem ready to do battle with the past. But a lot has happened in the intervening period, and while history may let them take their place among the pantheons of indie rock with the likes of Pavement and Sonic Youth, it’s hard to see where they fit into the current musical landscape?

The atmosphere on The Inevitable is thick with doom and gloom. Jenkins warns us on ‘Same Mistake’ about a mistake that will “hold you under until the air is gone” and kill your soul, while the equally cheery ‘Grey Clouds’ asks whether it’s worth waiting around for dreams with so many bad signs in the world, and on ‘Planets’ the singer’s head is crashing down to ground rather than being up in the clouds. It’s fair to say he’s not a happy bunny, and listeners might find the Black Heart Procession’s recent Blood Bunny/Black Rabbit ep an easier pill to swallow. Of course, none of this would matter a jot if the music stirred the soul. Unfortunately, the backing is delivered efficiently, one might almost say clinically, but with too much calm: steady rhythms, clean angular guitar and an 80s style synth-keyboard production, giving the album a bright sheen but leaving it sounding rather flat and lifeless. The Black Heart Procession turned these kind of moods into bleak and hauntingly beautiful vignettes (2004′s Amore Del Tropico and The Spell are both classic albums of creaking Americana), but Three Mile Pilot on The Inevitable have moved past angst-ridden post-rock to … just plain old indie rock. Pedestrian but certainly not Pavement!

To some extent, there may be a lack of commitment or musical ambition among members of the band, or possibly personalities getting in the way of ideas, but the net result is a lack of clear musical identity. Sadly, that may be the most significant thing to resonate with The Inevitable, that this is a band struggling to regain the momentum and direction of it’s previous album, long gone but which by all accounts sounded nervy, vengeful and powerful. Consider the barnstorming ‘Ruin’, one of the more conventional songs on Another Day, Another Sea’ but wracked with nerve and sinew, as Jenkins explodes into effusive ‘bleeding’ life, bellowing out “Nothing you say that made me feel this way, why I should ruin you”. Jenkins vocal on much of The Inevitable is willowy and ghostlike by comparison, and boxed in with the rather insipid production. The memory of its predecessor is briefly revived in ‘The Threshold’, where his vocal sounds momentarily energized again, but quickly slips back again into the soporific:

“Time away won’t ease your mind

all this time wondering about time and where it went

don’t lie awake and wonder

don’t lie awake listen you know it’s come today”

On far too much of The Inevitable, Three Mile Pilot have fractured into forgettable parts, and although Jenkins and co. briefly wake from their torpor towards the end of the album it’s too late to mount a late challenge. ‘One Falls Away’ could happily grace a Black Heart Procession album and Jenkins delivers his vocals half-spoken on ‘What’s in the air?’ finding his voice at last. But we have to wait right until the end , and a glimpse at brilliance is all we get here, with album closer ‘The Premonition’. A sort of homecoming, the song laments all the sun missed, befitting of a band from San Diego that spent too much time in darkness. The oblique references to the sun, added to the sea and the desert of its warmer and much more deserving 1997 outing, give us some idea of what we’re missing here.

Battles aside, on The Inevitable Past is The Future Forgotten Three Mile Pilot sound disappointed in life and it’s hard not to share their disappointment. In spite of the rallying cry of the opening track and a few hopeful signs, the mood of doom and gloom inevitably rubs off on the listener. Let’s keep the sun shining a little longer and hope the true battle for our hearts and minds continues.