The first two and best Breeder's records finally get their well-deserved vinyl reissue treatment!!
A portentous title if there ever was one, 1993's Last Splash was the bands biggest release, but one that crippled their lasting impact. With Kim Deal in full control and the Pixies broken up, she was able to broker this blockbuster release on the strength of a few singles, especially the mega-crossover hit, "Cannonball". That song played everywhere!!! Its hooky riff was even used as a sample in another worldwide smash hit, "Firestarter" by The Prodigy, securing Deal plenty of royalties. With Deal's twin sister, Kelly replacing Tanya Donnelly, the band gained creative intensity with stronger songwriting. But they also gained some heavy baggage, as their sudden superstar status took the band down some dark roads in order to deal with the relentless pressures of fame and touring. It took nearly ten years for the band to release their next record, but they were forever changed. One of the best alternative rock records of the nineties, at least time has been kind to Last Splash, still holding up after all these years. But not without leaving a near-fatal mark that the band is just now finally recovering from.
The first two and best Breeder's records finally get their well-deserved vinyl reissue treatment!
Pod was first released in 1990 as a side-project for Kim Deal of the Pixies and Tanya Donnelly from Throwing Muses to finally express some of the creative freedom they were lacking in their main bands. Joined by Josephine Wiggs of Perfect Disaster and produced by Steve Albini, The Breeders turned out an album with far more potential and fun than either of the two records the Pixies (Bossanova) and the Muses (Hunkpapa) put out at the time. Though the line-up was short-lived (Donnelly left shortly after to form her own band, Belly), Pod has become over the years a widely beloved record with more creative urgency and risk-taking than its more commercially successful follow-up. It pretty much jump-started what music would become in the nineties and still hasn't lost any of its timeless power. So awesome!
To truly understand our love of this band we have to go WAY back. Before they even existed in fact, to a time where we were all loving a band called the Replacements. Not that we don't STILL love the replacements. But back in the late eighties, the Replacements were everything we wanted in a rock band. Heavy, noisy, sloppy, drunk, wild and catchy as hell. But, then we discovered Soul Asylum, who had the same sort of raggedy rocking Midwestern charm, but who were a little more punk rock (having started out as a band called Loud Fast Rules after all) and with songs that were a little more fucked up. Sort of like a 'weirder' Replacements. But there was another step after that. One that probably only a handful of folks took. Sure we were loving Soul Asylum, but we were still longing for something a little heavier and weirder and more fucked up. Which was to be found in a little band called Skunk, who had a couple records on TwinTone near the end of the eighties, after which they disappeared without a trace.
Which is a damn shame. With all this indie rock crate digging going on lately, someone should definitely grab those two Skunk records and stick em on a single disc and reissue them RIGHT NOW! The Skunk song "(I'm Such A) Chump / (To Be The) Chump" is like the "Freebird" or "Stairway To Heaven" of indie rock. Super long, tons of parts, completely spic and packed with raging punk rock riffs, sweet indie jangle, Maiden-ish harmony guitar leads, and a super bad ass raspy vocal. But what does all this have to do with Chavez? Well, one third of the long lost Skunk eventually ended up in Chavez, and we can't help but hear some of what we loved so much in Skunk, in the much more modern and angular, but no less indie and jangly Chavez.
So here we have the ultimate, and as far as we know, absolutely comprehensive, Chavez collection, gathering up both the albums, Gone Glimmering and Ride The Fader, all the b-side tracks from every single, an unreleased studio track, two videos, and a tour documentary, TWO massive books with all the art from the albums, the singles and tons of extra liner notes and photos. We did list the two Chavez records a while back, two records we loved but that predated the AQ list, and even then we thought about making them records of the week, but they were nearly a decade old, so it seemed a little strange. But now with this deluxe double cd / dvd reissue set, the kind folks at Matador have presented us with the perfect opportunity to make -both- records record of the week AT ONCE! Which makes perfect sense really. Gone Glimmering and Ride The Fader are the perfect one-two punch. Two discs of thick angular guitars, strange start stop riffing, a sort of indie rock AC/DC. Catchy and heavy, but so subtle and jangly and pretty weird too. We love them both equally, so this set is a godsend. But let's dip into the reviews of the individual records for more on just how dang great these discs really are.
Gone Glimmering: Chavez were hardly unknown, or even underground -- this record was released on Matador after all -- but they were one of those bands that just seemed to sort of slip under everyone's radar, which is unfortunate (or perhaps for the best) as they could've easily been massively huge MTV stadium stars next to the likes of Nirvana and Soundgarden. They had the heaviness and the catchiness that came to define grunge bands of the time, but Chavez's approach to song-writing was still idiosyncratic and immediately recognizable -- they have a way of just having the guitars and drums going, the guitars playing a simple ringing repetitive not-quite harmonic, building an eerie sort of drone until the bass finally cuts in, leveling buildings and setting the groove. This unique separation of instruments on tracks like "Break Up Your Band", "The Ghost By the Sea" and the minor-epic closer "Relaxed Fit" creates the perfect counter-point of tension for the eventual explosive cohesion when the four members coalesce into an insidiously catchy chorus. And then there's "Pentagram Ring" -- the best song Nirvana never wrote and one of the all-time catchiest jump-around-and-smash-your-bedroom-to-shit teenage angst anthems ever!
Ride The Fader: This 1996 album from Chavez is a decidedly mellower affair than the noise-drenched assault of their riveting debut Gone Glimmering. Ride the Fader is a logical and dare we say more mature follow-up, with better and almost heavier production than before. Now when we say it's mellower that's not meant to imply lazier or less intense, instead, the band has loosed some of its Nirvana-inspired grunge trappings and opted for a more patient and understated tone, mixing menace and melody not unlike a heavier Slint. Not to say that the quartet can't still kick out the super whacked-out feedback fuzz on such house-levelers as "Tight Around the Jaws" and the epic harmonic heaviness of "You Must Be Stopped", once again leaving their most massive riffage for the mighty album closer. But mostly these are elegantly pretty, finely crafted and astutely affecting songs that stand alongside other practitioners of 'slow rock', from a band interested in both the subtle hook and blown amps. If mixing Floor, Low, Slint and Nirvana makes sense to you, this record has everything you want.
So there you have it. Anyone who missed out on Chavez completely are in for a big ol' treat. And fans of the band will absolutely want this too, remastered sound, tons of liner notes, all the singles tracks in one place, videos, an unreleased song, plus you won't have to feel too bad about rebuying 'em as this double cd / dvd set is priced like a single cd!
While we wait for the repress of the entire awesome 6lp+3cd When I See The Sun Codeine boxset, and while we're still reveling in their recent visit, and mind blowing Great American Music Hall reunion tour performance, we might as well take a second to focus on this, their breathtaking debut, now re-released individually, separate from the boxset, fleshed out with a handful of bonus tracks, Peel Sessions, demos and rarities, thus totally essential for obsessives like us (or you?) - well, at least those among us who haven't already gone whole hog and bought the boxset. But for all you vinyl freaks who have been waiting to check these guys out, this is the perfect introduction, to one of the most beautiful, intense, moving, and hauntingly lovely chunks of slowcore indie rock EVER, the 1991 debut from Sub Pop slow-core specialists Codeine. Definitely one of those records that Andee, Allan, et. al. here will tell you, if you don't have it already, you oughta get one now...seriously. Emo, indie-rock, post-rock, whatever this is, it's a classic. A classic of majestic melancholia. For the Frigid Stars LP, this NYC-based trio consisted of Stephen Immerwahr on bass and vocals, Chris Brokaw on drums and guitar and John Engle on guitar. They employ the soft-loud dynamic that their former Sub Pop labelmates Nirvana already made famous (or would around that same year). Not that they sound much like Nirvana. They sound a bit more like Low, albeit a lumbering downtuned Low. Codeine's own brand of moody, melodic misery wouldn't, couldn't be an MTV hit. Indie-pop it was, but so sad and slow... The songs here share slowly crawling tempos, and echoey drum hits and big distorted guitar chords crashing down to give extra weight to Immerwahr's weary vocals and love-lost lyrics. We've always wanted to hear a metal band do a cover of some track from this record, maybe "D". But even though this isn't really "heavy" in a metal sense, it still IS heavy. A great record for when you're sad and alone. Strange how something like this will make you feel better, but it will.
As a side note, one aQ-er first heard this album over the phone. Not the whole album, but sound clips much like the ones on our website. That's right, way back when before the internet and the mp3 and all that, somebody got the idea to do a dial-up music service where you'd get to check out new music over the phone, by calling a 900-number, and using a touch-tone phone to choose what you wanted to hear. It had something to do with the old Factsheet Five 'zine as we recall. We have vague memories of looking at the album cover reproduced in the 'zine - a negative photo of black stars floating in white emptiness - and hearing the long-distance sounds of those Frigid Stars like a transmission from that deep space void... even under those circumstances, maybe especially under those circumstances, Codeine were so effective. We might just have selected it to listen to on the basis of the album cover and title alone, and were not disappointed.
It's official. Guided By Voices are no more. But what a streak. Hundreds of songs, dozens of releases, almost all of them awesome! That's a pretty good record by anyones standards. But if forced to pick THE record that best exemplifies what made Guided By Voices so special, it would have to be Bee Thousand. Originally released in 1994, Bee Thousand perfectly captured both sides of GBV, the frustratingly experimental fragmentary side, with short 30 second bursts of pop brilliance that burnt out before making it out of the first verse, exhausting in under a minute, the sort of hook other bands would kill for and would most likely repeat 50 times in a song if they had come up with it, and classic pop songsmithery, with gorgeously hooky, jangly pop gems, cobbled together from bits of the Beatles and the Kinks and other pop stalwarts, all filtered through GBV frontman Bob Pollard's non-sequiter flecked lyrcal flights of fancy and a distinctly drunken desire to ROCK! It's impossible to describe exactly what makes this record so great. The songs sure, but also the way they are recorded, and the sequencing, and the way some songs are butted up right against each other, and some songs just cut off and trample all over the end of another songs. It's absolutely perfect. One of those rare records where the spaces between songs and the random bits of sonic detritus are jus as catchy as the songs themselves. Sort of like the way you would find yourself humming the drum fills in Nirvana songs, GBV records were a single dense collection of sounds and songs and parts and pauses and chunks of rock and pop assembled in a seemingly haphazzard arrangement, but on closer inspection, it couldn't be any other way, and most certainly couldn't be played by any other band. The first ten minutes of Bee Thousand is perhaps the finest opening salvo in musical history. "Hardcore UFO's", "Buzzards And Dreadful Crows", "Tractor Rape Chain", "The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory". A 1-2-3-4 punch! And while the record is basically solid, no filler to be found, there are a handful of POP CLASSICS scattered throughout: "Echoes Myron", "Goldstar For Robot Boy", "Awful Bliss", "I Am A Scientist" and more... This record is definitely one of the best indie rock records of all time. Fuck Slanted And Enchanted. Sure that's a great record, but it's irony-heavy and too cool. Bee Thousand is just a regular bunch of beer drinking yokels from Ohio who love pop music, love to rock and somehow struck gold. If you don't own this record, for fuck's sake GET IT!
Another winner from the Denver/Athens (NMH, Olivia Tremor Control, Apples in Stereo) pop axis. 60's British Invasion pop a la Kinks meets lofi 4-trackery. Total Syd Barret vox, and incredible fuzz-drenched extended loopy beauty. Pop record of 1996, bar nothing. Stunning, stellar work from one of Denver's Elephant 6 posse and 1996 is their year. Jeff Mangum sings like Syd Barrett & Chris Knox, his lyrics bear repeated close reading, and just when you think it might turn sweet, a great big beautiful wall of noise hits you and you know that everything is going to be all right cos his instincts are so good. So far proving itself tasty to everyone we've played it for, no matter what their preferred flavor, this is the record Strapping Fieldhands should've and could've made after Discus, if only they'd kept it focused. Here're some of the lyrics to "Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone," which we rather pathetically found ourselves inspired to transcribe: > there are beads that wrap around yr knees that crackle into the dark > like a walk in the park, like the hole in yr head > like the feeling you get when you realize yr dead this time > we ride rollercoasters into the ocean > we feel no emotion as we spiral down to the world > and i guess it's worth yr time > cos there's some lives you live and some you leave behind > it gets hard to explain > the gardenhead knows my name > [dot.gif] leave me alone > for you know this isn't the first time > in fact this is twice in a row > that the angels have stepped thru our landslide > and filled up our garden with snow > and i don't wish the taste of yr insides > for i've called out yr name thru my phone > for the glory boys at yr bedside > will love you as long as you're something to love > [dot.gif] follow me through > the city of frost covered angels > i swear i have nothing to prove > i just wanna dance in yr tangles > to give me some reason to move > but to take on the world at all angles > requires a strength i can't use > so i'll meet you up high in yr anger > alone and it's moping and waiting for you > a love that is hoping and waiting for you
As much as I've whined and moaned about Pavement's last few albums being, in my opinion, less than wonderful, no one can dispute the fact that Slanted & Enchanted is one fucking great record. If you have never heard Pavement's full length debut, stop reading right now. Just buy it. It's like the zenith of indie rock. It could be the only indie rock record you own and you would still have the best of the genre. (And if you disagree, my friend Andee will beat you up.) The songs are so satisfyingly melodic yet delivered all fractured and suffused with a lackadaisical sort of ironic stance. Which was at one point cool, remember?
Anyway, what we have here is a deluxe double disc reissue for the price of a single disc. In addition to the entire Slanted & Enchanted album, you get: several tracks from the Slanted session, a John Peel octet of tunes, the Watery Domestic ep, tracks from the Watery session, and an entire live show! A total of 48 tracks, 23 of which are previously unreleased.
The accompanying booklet is full of juicy tidbits from Matador label guys Chris Lombard and Gerard Cosloy, Drag City founder Dan Koretzky (both labels wanted to release it), their booker, and the band itself. So essential.
Red Red Meat barely get a mention on the aQuarius website, mostly in reviews of post-RRM outfit Califone, but as with many bands, that has more to do with timing than anything, predating as they did our New Arrivals list. If there was time, we can think of hundreds of bands we'd love to revisit and give their due. And Red Red Meat would definitely be at the top of the list for some of us. So this deluxe expanded reissue of RRM's 3rd, and arguably best, record makes now as good a time as any to gush a bit about one of our favorite records of the nineties.
When Sub Pop began expanding its focus beyond grunge, signing all sorts of bands, from pop to country, slowcore to garage rock, they definitely lost a lot of their hardcore buy-anything-on-Sub-Pop fans. But for many of us, no matter how into the grunge years we were (and believe you me, some of us were WAY into grunge), this shift marked the beginning of Sub Pop's transition into more than a regional label focused on a single sound, and is precisely why Sub Pop continues to thrive while so many other labels fell by the wayside. Among those un-traditionally Sub Pop sounding bands were groups like Codeine, Rein Sanction, Hardship Post, Jale and Red Red Meat, all of which ended up loving as much as if not more than all the classic grunge mainstays.
But Red Red Meat, there was just really something special about these guys. They were sort of country, definitely fitting loosely into the burgeoning alt-country movement, but they were so much more, their twang was rooted in a sort of timeless rock, but at the same time it was infused with a druggy warble, wreathed in hazy swirls of whirs and drones, the guitars were murky and muddy, the slide guitar slippery slithery, frontman Tim Rutili's vocals were weary and washed out, emotional, but laid back and slurred, perfectly complimenting the band's warped warble.
Bunny Gets Paid, originally released in 1995, found the band pushing their sound even further out, the sound still recognizably Red Red Meat, but from record opener "Carpet Of Horses", the band seemed determined to create some sort of 'classic' bit of drone drenched country blues. Lazily strummed acoustic guitars draped over a whirring fuzzy pulsing drone, the vocals appropriately melancholy, rough and ragged, allowed to drift over the slow shifting drone beneath, almost no percussion, very little structure, the song a living breathing bit of spaced out dream folk, incredible (and incredibly subtle) melodies, a killer main hook, all left to just sort of shimmer and hover and sprawl, sun baked and druggy, like some sort of drugfolk raga, definitely prescient, unwittingly laying out the blueprint for new weird America or freak folk or whatever you want to call it a decade later.
But Bunny Gets Paid is not all sprawling oozing melting slow motion blues, the band do rock, "Chain Chain Chain" is some classic sounding nineties indie rock and roll, reminding us of a more classic rock sounding Grifters, but still not losing any of their wooze or warble, the record doused in effects, guitars warped, alternatingly crunchy and jagged, bluesy and ooze-y. "Buttered" is a total heartbreaker, thick steel string strum and twang, subtle strings, effects dappled ambience, thick swaths of whirring drone, the whole thing managing to sound intimate and bedroomy, but also epic and timeless.
The classic track here though has to be "Gauze", a moody minor key lope, so laid back and soporific, the guitars spidery and translucent, the vocals seemingly an afterthought, the drums a simple shuffle, lush and intimate and hushed, until the chorus, another gut wrenching heartbreaker, the vocals wrapped in almost Butthole Surfers FX, but done so deftly, that instead of sounding weird or fucked up, it just sound perfect, delivering a total break up /make up mix tape refrain to die for. And so it goes. "Idiot Son" is a the Rolling Stones filtered through nineties indie rock and busted four tracks (with more nods to the Grifters), "Bunny Gets Paid" is another meandering druggy droney drift, disembodied vocals, fragmented guitars and skittery percussion, and another killer hook buried in the murk and mire, and the record continues to unfurl, in all its hazy, lazy, dreamy, wasted, late afternoon, too many beers and broken hearts glory, finishing off with a 2 minute bit of near perfect bedroom folk, peppered with singing strings, reverbed piano, all wrapped around Rituli's gorgeously weathered croon.
Absolutely one of our all time favorite records ever. There's a whole bonus disc too, which we'll get to in a second, but the record itself is reason enough to pick this up, especially if somehow you've never heard it. Anyone into Califone, Calexico, Souled American, Giant Sand, Neko Case, Ryan Adams, should absolutely pick this up, and any one into the current crop of freak folk and drone psych who aren't adverse to actual songs, might dig this too.
The bonus disc of b-sides, alternate versions and covers, makes this essential, even for folks like us who already have it. A 4-track demo of "Chain Chain Chain", less rocking, all stripped down and appropriately lo-fi and languid, a single version of "Idiot Son" that finds the song stretched out even further. Record opener "Carpet Of Horses" gets reworked into a pounding dirge, way more rocking and heavy than the original, but still just as darkly evocative, and FOUR unreleased tracks, one a weird dub workout, the other three wonderfully weird warbly rockers (one rife with horns) that don't sound at all out of place alongside the rest of Bunny Gets Paid.
And the super iconic doll's head in the tipped over glass cover art gets a deluxe reimagining, a massive fold out multi panel digipak inside a swank slipcover, with a thick booklet, jammed with photos, original covers and artwork, as well as some newly penned liner notes from band members and Red Red Meat fans including members of the Shins, the Fruit Bats, Modest Mouse and others!
Lots of claims could be made for best indie rock record ever. Pavement's Slanted And Enchanted is an obvious choice. But there are tons of other contenders, records by Dinosaur Jr., Galaxie 500, Seam, Archers Of Loaf, the Pixies, the Breeders, Unrest, Slint, Yo La Tengo, Superchunk...
But what about Sebadoh? Originally Lou Barlow's bedroom side project while he was playing bass in Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh went from soft 4-track sad boy ruminations to full on rambunctious indie rock without losing Barlow's tender hearted, mopey moodiness. This record, III, is where they really clicked. To be totally honest, the first two are our absolute favorites (c'mon, somebody reissue The Freed Weed!!!) but until those are available again, we'll just have to cast our lot with III. Not entirely fair to compare them though. The first two Sebadoh records were just Lou, in his bedroom, singing and strumming, a ramshackle collection of sweet sad songs and freaked out tape experiments, where as by the time of III, Sebadoh was a real rock band, with not just two other band members, but two other songwriters, Eric Gaffney and Jason Lowenstein. Giving Sebadoh a distinctly schizophrenic sound, veering from introspective to noisy and annoying depending on whose song it was. Years before Conor Oberst ascended to the weepy, slouchy indie throne, Sebadoh's Lou Barlow was already the king of the lo-fi tearjerker. He ruled the roost of unabashed romantics in his rumpled threadbare cardigan, spectacles and tousled mop of hair. However, as III proved beyond a doubt, Sebadoh wasn't confined to lovey-dovey bedroom balladry, nope they could tear shit up a-plenty providing both cathartic heartbaring sadsack sweetness and blistering noise rawk for indie kids near and far.
The copious liner notes are a bit confusing though. As far as we were concerned, Sebadoh WAS Lou Barlow, who was later joined by Eric and Jason. But the liner notes, especially Gaffney's, paint a quite different picture. Gaffney goes on and on about how it was basically his band and his songs. But a quick listen to the record (and a look at each member's subsequent sonic track record) reveals the truth, that Lou was still the quiet mastermind. Eric has some killer tracks for sure, and Jason's songs are wild and chaotic (this was before he would grow into a songwriter to rival Lou on later Sebadoh discs) but almost without exception the perfect pop gems here are penned by Lou. Just check out the opener "The Freed Pig", hard to imagine a more perfect indie rock song. Jangly and catchy, a little ramshackle, a teensy bit melancholy, but exuberant and hopeful. With a killer crunchy chorus.
III is peppered with sweet soft acoustic numbers that sound like they were plucked from old Sebadoh cassettes. Each one sad and lovely, perfect mix tape material way back in 1991 (Yeesh, has it really been fifteen years?!), the prototype for EVERY home recorded bedroom record since. Jason contributes some Minutemen sounding instrumental jams ("Sickles & Hammers"), some slow motion druggy stoner jams ("Smoke A Bowl"), a killer twangy acoustic hoedown ("Black Haired Girl") and most of the really esoteric tunes. Eric offers up some lilting minor key jangle ("Violet Execution"), some super fuzzed out jangly tribal psych rock ("Limb By Limb") and the super lengthy bizarre drugged out psych jam "As The World Dies The Eyes Of God Grow Bigger". Between all of these musical flights of fancy, Lou gives us perfect pop song after perfect pop song, whether it's in the form of a whispered mumbly song fragment, or a glorious rocked out jangly jam. Somehow these disparate elements mesh perfectly into a totally rollicking chaotic indie rock masterpiece. A reissue of III on its own would definitely merit record of the week status, but there's a whole extra disc of singles and outtakes that make this absolutely essential.
First up on the extras disc is "Gimme Indie Rock" a tongue in cheek slam on their more popular indie contemporaries, which inadvertently became a hit and somehow sounded like, but better than, all the bands it was poking fun at (check out the very Dinosaur-like leads!) Speaks volumes that a tossed off fuck around track can be this good. Next up is quite possibly the best Sebadoh song ever "Ride The Darker Wave" a loping groove, with a totally catchy guitar part and an instantly unforgettable melody. Heavy and sludgy but perfectly poppy. The rest of the disc is jam packed with outtakes and alternate versions, a whole bunch of Gaffney tracks, as good as anything on the record proper, as well as a few other Lou gems. Also, tacked on at the very end is "Showtape '91" a 12 minute experimental tape piece, the band used to play at shows before they came on stage. It features the band reading various reviews (positive and negative), repeating the various mispronunciations of the band name, all amidst a cacophonous soundscape of tape manipulation and guitar grind. Very annoying but very very funny.
As befits a classic record like III, the packaging and reissue extras are amazing. Besides the wealth of extra and unreleased tracks, there are extensive liner notes from all three band members, tons of photos, and the whole thing is housed in a snazzy slipcase with the band name and album title embossed in metallic gold ink. We feel like we're 21 again!!!
It's a strange musical time lately, with pretty much every cool band we loved in the eighties and nineties reforming, many of them recording brand new albums, lots of them performing classic albums in their entirety, and while we're usually not all that psyched on the reunion thing, we have to say, we were pretty thrilled to get to see Slint, and some of us are going to see the Get Up Kids next week, and who could possibly complain about seeing the Butthole Surfers or Killdozer or Jesus Lizard? Sure, they were better back in the day, the energy is different, back then they were young and hungry and had something to prove, now they're moms and dads with jobs and many are probably doing it for the money, considering they're probably gonna make more reuniting for a few months now than they ever did in years of recording and touring.
Plus there's a whole new generation of music fanatics, who missed out on arguably some of the best music ever, many of whom love bands who wouldn't even exist if it weren't for all those bands that came before.
One reunion that folks have been clamoring for since mere moments after breaking up, is for emo legends Sunny Day Real Estate, and while it only took a decade, it looks like the band will in fact finally reunite, and tour, and yeah, we'll probably all be there, freaking out when they play the hits, and speaking of the hits, maybe more exciting than the reunion, is the deluxe reissue of SDRE's first two albums, Diary, and LP2, both absolute classics, redefining the template for modern day indie rock / emo, and like Slint, SDRE were most definitely a band that launched a million other bands. Odds are most folks have these discs already, but if for some reason you don't holy shit are you in for a treat. Heavy, mathy, emotional, catchy, totally rocking, and just absolutely incredible.
Diary, originally released back in 1994, is another one of those records that is so front loaded, you could be forgiven for owning this record and nor making it to the end. Even now, we have to fight the urge to play the first few tracks over and over and over. But fight on, cuz the second half is just as kick ass.
"Seven" and "In Circles" are probably SDRE's best known songs and for good reason, two of THEE most perfect indie rock jams ever. The guitars lines are tangled melodic, the riffs crunchy, the drums complex and pounding, the arrangements complex, with plenty of starts and stops, little bursts of manic chug, streaks of chiming shimmer, the vocals so anguished and passionate, high and reedy, but still a little rough and ragged, keening and on the verge of breaking, slipping from whisper to howl and back again, really, if you've never heard these guys, just listen to the sound samples, and if you're not immediately smitten / obsessed, then heck, we're not sure what else to do for you.
"In Circles" is the prettier half of the opening one-two punch, with that immediately recognizable looped guitar intro, before slipping into some shimmery stripped down almost slowcore, but with a fantastically soaring, epic, majestic, hands in the air, heartbreak chorus, which ranks up there as one of those all time goosebumps, hair on the back of your neck, tearjerker, air guitar, indie rock musical moments, and a testament to its power is that it has that affect EVERY time, and still does 15 years later.
So after listening to those two songs 20 or 30 times, force yourself to continue on, you won't be disappointed. "Song About An Angel" is another slow brooding drift, that has one of the coolest stop start staccato bridges ever, as catchy as any other song's chorus. "47" had it been pushed forward a little in the playing order, might have been part of that irresistible replay opening salvo, with an incredible main melody, and verses that somehow manage to be even catchier than the catchy chorus. And don't let all this poppiness and catchiness ward off you heavy music folks, all that pop is tangled up and intertwined with some serious heaviness, plenty of heft and crunch, some incredible guitar playing, wild mathy, almost metallic drumming, and again, all wound up into highly unconventional song structures.
We could go on and on and on, the rest of the record is just as awesome, there are a handful of brooding slow burners, but even those are peppered with some seriously emo blowouts, not a bad one in the bunch, it's not hard to see why we all freaked out about this band when this record first appeared, and none of its power or emotion or energy has been blunted by the passing of time. Not in the least.
The reissue features two bonus tracks, from the awesome and long gone Thief, Steal Me A Peach 7", which predated Diary by about a year, and if anything is even heavier and more dense, the perfect sort of bonus track, melding seamlessly with the album proper (and one thing we notice listening to the 7"s tracks is how much SDRE sometimes sounded like a WAY heavier, way more rocking Decemberists!). New fancy gatefold digipak packaging, with that iconic Fisher Price Little People parody artwork, featuring those conical people shaped toys, set in depressing environments, like in a kitchen with the toast burning, amidst a not so happy family, a couple sleeping far apart in their bed, in surgery, at the scene of a car accident, etc. Also includes all new liner notes and interviews with the various band members.
One complaint about the cd packaging though, the digipak comes in a slipcover, which is always cool, but the slipcover has the record title, band name, and some random text about bonus tracks and the producer, stuff that should obviously have been on a sticker but is printed over that super cool artwork, and unfortunately, you can't toss the slipcover, cuz it's the ONLY place where the track listing is printed, thankfully, the lp version does not make the same mistake...
Nine years is a seriously long time, but with this latest Superchunk record it might as well have been nine months, heck even nine weeks. It's like they never left. Nine years since their last record, but listening to Majesty Shredding you'd never know it. Yeah, it's a cliche, but in this case it's true. Hardly any bands make it 20 years, and even fewer sound this good after two whole decades, and the crazy thing is that while there are a million bands that sound like Superchunk, or at least have been TRYING to sound like them, the truth is, that nobody sounds like Superchunk. The songs, the sound, Mac's voice, the harmonies, the melodies, Superchunk are definitely one of those rare bands who have a totally unique sound, not so much in that their sound is unlike anything that's come before, instead they've just taken a sound, in this case, a fuzzy punky pop, and made it all their own, refining it and twisting it into a shape that is distinctly and uniquely Superchunk. Don't believe us? Have a listen to the opening one two punch of "Digging For Something" and "My Gap Feels Weird", two songs that stack up against pretty much anything the band has ever recorded. "Digging For Something" is the single, and it makes sense, totally catchy and hooky and super rocking, but also totally classic nineties style college rock, as if they wrote it back in 1991 and only just got around to recording it this year. Cool spidery guitar melodies, loose wild drumming, and a chorus that KILLS. But then there's "My Gap Feels Weird", supposedly a song based on a random post dental procedure comment, but one that could speak just as easily to the gap between these elder statesmen of indie rock, and the current crop of pop punk contenders, but whatever it means, it's possibly the raddest Superchunk jam in years, rollicking and rambunctious, with a cool weird hooky chorus, complete with some cool falsetto vox and a a verse that manages to be just as catchy as the chorus! We'd love to break down the rest of the record more, but these first two track have been on nonstop repeat play since this first came in. But fear not, as we dig deeper and deeper into the rest of the tracks, it's obvious, like past Superchunk records, it's all killer, no filler. Now excuse us while we go back and listen to this again from the top!!!
It's pretty much impossible to overestimate the importance of North Carolina's Superchunk on the indie rock landscape, by now most folks, even those with just the most fleeting interest in popular music, are probably familair with these scrappy punk pop indie rockers, heck, Superchunk frontman Mac McCaughan was recently a special guest on NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, which is about as mainstream as it gets. Yet even now, playing festivals, headlining huge shows, showing up on NPR, selling thousands and thousands of records, the band still SOUNDS the way they did when they were a little DIY rock band from Chapel Hill, and the music is just as energetic and fun and crazy catchy, which makes sense really, Superchunk definitely did it their way, 20 years and still going strong, van tour after van tour, sweaty club shows, lots of 7"s that many of us still treasure, and let's not forget, launching, and to this day still running, one of the coolest (and one of the most important) indie labels around, Merge Records.
But as they say, it's all about the music, and holy crap, does Superchunk make some of the catchiest, hookiest, most rocking, supercharged indie rock around. STILL. But if there was a pantheon for greatest indie rock records of all time, up there alongside Slint's Spiderland, Pavement's Slanted And Enchanted, Sunny Day Real Estate's Diary, Guided By Voices ' Bee Thousand, etc, we would most definitely have to include Superchunk's second and third albums, No Pocky For Kitty and On The Mouth.
While their 1990 self titled debut included the ALL TIME indie rock anthem "Slack Motherfucker", the band's first single and perhaps defining moment, everything great about Superchunk got even greater with No Pocky For Kitty. The sound tighter, more rocking, the songs EVEN CATCHIER. Every single track on No Pocky is an indie rock classic. The opening salvo of "Skip Steps 1 & 3", Seed Toss" and "Cast Iron" is pretty impossible to beat, the crunchy LOUD guitars, the pounding drums, Mac's high emotive vocals, and hooks, all over the goddamn place, so catchy it plays like a greatest hits more than an album proper. Jangly and bittersweet, gorgeous melodies, incredible lyrics, all of these songs destined for mixtapes for sure.
And remember when we said those first three songs were tough to beat? Well, that's only if you don't consider the rest of the record. Highlights include "Punch Me Harder" is a driving distorted rocker, with ridiculously hooky guitars, and a chorus that kills, and a verse that's just as catchy, and record closer "Throwing Things", which is just so perfect, midtempo and dreamy, with a keening main melody that will get stuck in your head forEVER.
Easily one of our favorite records ever, indie rock or otherwise!
It's pretty much impossible to overestimate the importance of North Carolina's Superchunk on the indie rock landscape, by now most folks, even those with just the most fleeting interest in popular music, are probably familair with these scrappy punk pop indie rockers, heck, Superchunk frontman Mac McCaughan was recently a special guest on NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, which is about as mainstream as it gets. Yet even now, playing festivals, headlining huge shows, showing up on NPR, selling thousands and thousands of records, the band still SOUNDS the way they did when they were a little DIY rock band from Chapel Hill, and the music is just as energetic and fun and crazy catchy, which makes sense really, Superchunk definitely did it their way, 20 years and still going strong, van tour after van tour, sweaty club shows, lots of 7"s that many of us still treasure, and let's not forget, launching, and to this day still running, one of the coolest (and one of the most important) indie labels around, Merge Records.
But as they say, it's all about the music, and holy crap, does Superchunk make some of the catchiest, hookiest, most rocking, supercharged indie rock around. STILL. But if there was a pantheon for greatest indie rock records of all time, up there alongside Slint's Spiderland, Pavement's Slanted And Enchanted, Sunny Day Real Estate's Diary, Guided By Voices ' Bee Thousand, etc, we would most definitely have to include Superchunk's second and third albums, No Pocky For Kitty and On The Mouth.
On the Mouth was Superchunk's third record, originally released in 1993, and was in the unenviable task of following up the near perfect and crazy iconic No Pocky For Kitty, but it's like the band was already totally prepared to wipe that skeptical smirk of the faces of all non bleievers, cuz right out of the gate comes "Precision Auto", maybe one of their raddest jams yet, fast and furious, with those immediately recognizable intertwining crunchy guitar harmonies, and then yeah, another chorus any other band would sell their souls for. And like No Pocky before it, the band basically dares themselves to keep the rest of the record as kick as and cartchy as the opener, and damn if they don't toally pull it off. Some of our other all time Superchunk faves are here, "Mower", a loping hook filled churn, with thick buzzing bass, crashing guitars a verse and a chorus both competing for the catchiness crown. And then there's "The Question Is How Fast", a ridiculously anthemic jam, as supercharged as anything they've written, but also subtly moody, with woozy serpentine melodies, more kick ass drumming, and a cool halftime lead-in straight into another killer chorus, and at the risk of getting way too repetitive, just more hooks and more catchiness...
Seventeen years later, and On The Mouth could have come out yesterday, and somehow still sounds better than about 99 percent of the the other indie rock out there...
There definitely seems to be a pattern developing with recent Records Of The Week. The Loop reissues a few lists back, The Telescopes last time, and now Swervedriver. We hadn't really noticed at first, we were just so damn excited that so many of our favorite records were getting reissued. And while it might seem a bit strange to be looking back instead of forward, most of the music we love now wouldn't even exist if it weren't for these bands, or if they did they'd sound WAY different. And the thing is, the aQuarius list is in no way comprehensive and complete, as we only started doing it about 12 or 13 years ago, which means everything pre-1995 or '96 is not represented, which is a huge bummer since the late eighties and early nineties are the very times that defined most of us musically. Thus we've done our best to review reissues of lost classics, or even not lost classics, from those eras, eighties metal, shoegaze, grunge, nineties college rock, the list of records we discovered during that time, that STILL resonate and kick ass could fill up a hundred aQ lists. So instead of dwelling on the fact that these are not actually new, let's just consider then records we loved, and still love, and records we're convinced folks out there who are too young to remember, or may have just missed out the first time around, will probably also love, records that had they been released later, would have no doubt been showered with adoration on the aQ list. Which brings us to a unanimous aQ fave, UK heavy shoegazers Swervedriver.
Calling Swervedriver shoegaze is a bit misleading, they were tangentially part of that scene, and their sound definitely had a bit of drift and shimmer to it, but unlike the rest of the shoegazers, Swervedriver were HEAVY. Super rocking, their wall of guitars was not ethereal and ephemeral, it was crunchy and distorted and thick, and besides all that, they wrote some of the catchiest songs ever. EVER. The sort of songs that explode into frenzied psychedelic shoegaze freakouts, but just as quickly slip into a dark chugging grooves with hooks that stick in your head like crazy, and parts the still to this day illicit shivers, even after a hundred listens. Rare is the band who can define a sound, and a scene and then totally transcend it.
For those new to Swervedriver, they definitely share much in common with their shoegaze scene compatriots My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Catherine Wheel, Chapterhouse, and the like, but as mentioned above, that shoegazey haze was just one element in their arsenal, and not at all the main one, that would be the dueling guitars, heavy and crunchy, melodic and lush, soaring one second grinding and chugging the next, often tangled into gorgeous harmonies, or layered to create thick walls of sound, those formed the basis of their sonic blueprint, over which they crafted incredible hook filled songs, some washed out and swoonsome, others hard and jagged and HEAVY. The vocals melodic but still plenty rough and raw, perfectly complimenting the heavy guitars and pounding drums, an impossibly perfect balance between heavy and pretty, hooky and hard, which is precisely what makes Swervedriver, one of our favorite bands ever.
And Raise one of our favorite -records- ever. Released in 1991, for anyone our age, or thereabouts, it was pretty difficult to not see Swervedriver everywhere, MTV, 120 Minutes, college radio, when Raise came out it was like nothing we had ever heard before, incredibly catchy and hooky but so rocking. And the songs, shit, most bands would give anything to have written "Son Of Mustang Ford" or "Rave Down", or heck, anything on Raise. But yeah, let's take "Son Of Mustang Ford". Plenty of folks will recognize it within seconds, that pounding rhythm, the thick layered guitars, and that main guitar hook, immediately exploding into an almost Treepeople (pre-Built To Spill) guitar tangle beneath killer vocals, before returning to that opening groove. Furious, and dark, and minor key, but so epic and kick ass, total head banging air guitar shoegaze nirvana. Then there's "Rave Down", their other big hit, that displays Swervedriver's other sonic side, guitars that a languorous and sunbaked, but still distorted and heavy, the song woozy and lilting without losing any of its power, and a change that still gives us goosebumps almost two decades later.
The thing with Swervedriver was that even though they had actual hits, the record was packed with could have been should have also been hits. Pretty much every song is hooky and heavy and catchy, not a weak track in the bunch. "Sandblasted", "Sci Flyer", both heavy blissed out rockers, "Feel So Real" sounds almost like a tougher heavier Lemonheads, with it's sweet little main melody and total pop main hook.
Totally and absolutely essential.
For the reissue of Raise, they tacked on 4 extra tracks, B-sides, outtakes, and damn if they don't sound just as kick ass as the album tracks proper. New packaging, deluxe 6 panel digipak with a thick booklet packed with photos and new liner notes from the band.
Ahhhh, Unrest. There was a time when Unrest were IT. They could do no wrong. Mark Robinson (Unrest / Teenbeat Records mainman) was king of the indie scene. And listening to this record there is no doubt in our minds as to why. While the records before Imperial were sloppy and chaotic (in a good way!) and sort of punk rock, they were also dark and dreamy and sweetly melancholy, all hinting at some doleful sensitive underside, lurking like a shy boy, beneath Unrest's spikey exterior. So along comes Imperial (originally released in 1992), and it was sort of like that shy boy finally got up the guts to talk to that girl he had been longing for all year, and while she still ignored him, something about reaching that point made him realize he didn't need loud noisy punk rock, or smashing chaos, he could just be himself, and the sound of being himself, finally unveiled on Imperial, managed to suddenly illuminate the pop treasure map Unrest had been following since day one. All that sweet sweet pop was now the focal point, the foundation, no longer hiding bashfully behind the crash and clang. Gone were the willful snottiness, the distorted guitars, the ramshcakle drumming and in their place, a languid, lustrous jangle pop shimmer, bathed in reverb, and laced with dreamy soulful crooning, lilting guitar melodies, and sweet sweet hooks, with the ultimate mixtape lyrics. "I Do Believe You Are Blushing". I mean, c'mon!! How sweetly romantic is that?! I for one must fess up to at least several tracks on Imperial making their way on to many a mix tape.
And while a few tracks do 'rock' ("Suki" has to be one of the best rocking pop songs EVER!), it's in that sort of liquidly propulsive Neu! meets Beat Happening sort of way, a droney jangle with repetitive guitars and shuffling rhythms, mesmerizing but a little bouncy too. However, on Imperial, it's all about the blissed out shimmer pop, lazy electric guitars, and distant throbbing bass floating delicately atop a slowly unfurling popscape, simple and absolutely beautiful, with Mark Robinson's gorgeous hearfelt croon as well as the occasional delicate angelic female vocal. So so so so beautiful!
This re-issue also tacks on 8 bonus tracks that while not included on the original, definitely sound like they could have just been placed anywhere throughout the record proper and would have seemed right at home. A massive 13 minute reworking of the title track, stretched out into a druggy, dreamy ambient janglescape, swoonsome and sweet, slowly shifting from a tripped out acapella blur to endless instrumental bliss-out. A trip hoppy version of "Isabel" that sounds just as good as the original, a couple ambient experiments that add more mystery to Imperial's moodiness, the dirgey , pretty slowcore crawl "Wednesday And Proud" and a few others. Inexplicably, they left off the infamous Unrest classic "Yes She Is My Skinhead Girl" which was only on a 7" and was once included as a bonus track on the import version of this. But that's hardly a complaint when faced with such a stunning slice of pop perfection. Listen to the sound samples and you will understand just what we mean.
For a few years, we'd frequently see our pal, Versus guitarist Richard Balayut, across the street at Lost Weekend Video where he worked with his then-Whysall Lane bandmate Adam Pfahler (also of Jawbreaker). Great guy, great bands. We were super sad when he decided to move back East to New York about a year or so ago, but we were overjoyed to hear that it brought him back into the fold of this beloved NYC band. Yes, after a long long hiatus they got back together last year, and we couldn't be happier. They were one of the best purveyors of that '90s college radio classic indie rock sound because they not only nailed the driving loud/quiet/loud dynamics, but also delivered fantastic pop hooks and intelligent lyrics... not to mention many a heartstring was plucked by Ms Fontaine Toups' lovely voice.
It's been a decade since they've released an album, but On The Ones And Threes makes it feel like it was just yesterday, as their classic sound is still so vibrant and fresh sounding. The record really shows all the great sides of the band from the more rocking moments to the bittersweet melancholy they've always been able to capture so perfectly. We're reminded a bit of the Low record, The Great Destroyer as it has a similar punchy and up front feel, and there are even some moments that make us think of The Breeders doing X covers. While we tend to be a bit reticent about bands we loved from the past reforming after so many years, there is something so organic, unforced and free flowing about this new Versus record that just makes us so happy they are back!
Finally, one of our all time favorite Yo La Tengo albums gets reissued on vinyl! Released in 1993, Painful represented a really important moment for and shift in YLT's sonic scope. While their early records were brimming with feedback and displayed a Sonic Youth like approach to rock, Painful fully introduced the more dreamy, blissed out and intoxicating side of their sound which they have continued to develop and master as the years have gone by.
Painful opens with the bittersweet "Big Day Coming", and gorgeously unfolds with some of the most beautiful and sad pop songs ever recorded, including "Nowhere Near" which still freezes us in our tracks and gives us goosebumps every time we hear it. While later albums like And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out, and I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, might be more widely recognized as classic albums, Painful really was the blueprint for the sounds that would evolve making Yo La Tengo one of the best bands of our generation. An absolute must have!
