This is another single my friend Amy gave me after we saw The Corin Tucker band, which by the way is a Sleater Kinney offshoot project, not a bluegrass shitkicker band. I questioned for a second why she'd be into that, but I'm an idiot.
I have no idea what year this comes from, but I'm going to guess late nineties (1990-1999, FL - ed) There is a particular sound that bands could get just with a 4-track or 2" tape if they were really lucky that sounds big and expensive these days...or there's so much no-fi dirty sounding static and fuzz for the past few years that it's jaded the way I'm hearing any audio that calls itself music.
The I wonder if it had to do with a lot of bands around this time maybe were still trying to emulate that commercial sound? Thinking maybe they could work within the system somehow... if you sound like the other guys but do something really interesting musically, we can make a difference.
I'm not shitting on these guys at all. I just know what a revelation it was to have all that blasted apart by Sebadoh, and it may not have anything to do with popular sound...it could just have been important for them to step away from the rehearsal space recordings. If we're spending some bucks at a studio, let's do it right. It's exciting. I understand. That being said the answer isn't always in burying everything under 2 tons of concrete. That only goes so far.
The graphic elements give away this era as well, lots of faux diagrams, arrows and math. But this sound isn't going in that complex masturbatory direction, it's more expressive and loose, and difficulty in math is different for different people. Things I call math probably are common sense to some people.
The thing I do love about the sleeve itself is the track info and the band title are both printed on a cardstock not really glued to anything, just floating aorund loose in the mylar sleeve...or maybe once a long time ago they were glued and now just barely stick.
There are elements that would become Sunny Day Real Estate, or were already Joan of Arc or Promise Ring. They're fast and loud, breaking the hardcore up with layers of slightly off-time vocals never singing together, that's the emo-choir.
Then again that sound thing could just be that this was pressed at 33 and you just inherently loose a lot of the depth which gives hardcore that thin flat sound because the actual sound that gets recorded is secondary. Then putting it on vinyl is an afterthought.
These guys are pulling off the emotional rock (was it even indie at this point? It feels wrong to call it that.
On an unrelated note, Midheaven sent out an email yesterday with a pretty sweet holiday 7" from Moon Duo...who knew these scary-psyche maniacs had a couple of Christmas songs in them:
New holiday themed single from MOON DUO. ERIK and SANAE add more lilt to the season than any combination of egg nog and booze ever will. On the B side the duo wrap a coat around the classic Goat Head Soup deep cut "Winter."
From Midheaven.
