Like just about everyone, I often think of bands in terms of the other bands of which they remind me. For Pinback, I picture them as a West Coast Sebadoh. Even though it’s meant in the most admiring way, such a classification is not fair because it may make it sound like they’re somehow aping the discordant yet melodic Bostonians who like their Splatter Technique lyrics with healthy doses of punk guitar and punker feedback. Plus, there’s the whole repetition thing that Pinback takes much further than Lou and the gang: chords, chorus, repeat. You can hear it all the way through Pinback’s discography and right up to their most recent, Autumn of the Seraphs. And contrary to every track sounding the same, each one finds a new way to make the same old thing sound totally original. No wonder Pinback’s following is so loyal. Check out a new track and some older ones, then check out Pinback guy Rob Crow, whose recent solo release kinda-sorta sounds like Pinback but kinda-sorta covers even more new territory.
ORIGINAL POST (9/17/04):
For those who consider “indie” a genre rather than just a classification, it’s probably such lo-fi, wounded-guy sounds as Sebadoh, Built to Spill, and Modest Mouse that come to mind when you hear the “I” word. But don’t forget about Pinback, who return to rock your world — well, that may be a bit overstated — with some loopy, melancholic, melodic pop. What’s new is “indie” again on the splendid single “Fortress.” The others are just for nostalgia’s sake.
Let me preface Licorice Roots by saying they’re an acquired taste. I admit I almost didn’t last twenty seconds into their record. Their wobbly, off-kilter sound knocked me off balance at first. At first. But I held strong and as soon as I ventured four tracks deep, their song “Hey There Little Love” saved the CD from certain eject-death. I learned to appreciate Licorice Roots for their peculiar low-fi-ness. It’s as if The Seeds were playing underwater, with a sprinkle of attitude courtesy of Ween. My swimming trunks are on and I’m in mid-cannonball, ready to take the Licorice Roots plunge! P.S. If the vocals are a bit much for you, check out the title track “Caves of the Sun.” It’d make a great soundtrack to a SpongeBob SquarePants Spaghetti Western.
I’m hesitant to file Aesop Rock under “rap” because I’ve learned that you’re statistically less likely to listen to it if I do (shame on you). That said, he does rap…but his music draws on influences ranging from art pop to beatnik jazz to first-wave electro and so on. Just depends at what moment you catch him. The only constant is Aesop’s dizzying flow and fertile narratives.
For a brief moment in the ’90s (I’m talking like, three years), Jud Ehrbar, Jeff Gatland, Anders Parker were responsible for some of the most underrated music of that decade. Reservoir (Ehrbar’s ambient-ish side project) and Varnaline (Parker’s Americana/altcountry-ish side project) were impressive enough, but Space Needle’s two albums, Voyager and Moray Eels Eat the Space Needle set the standard for melancholic, noisy (and often very lengthy) art rock that modern acts like Animal Collective and Black Dice are still trying to catch up with. Why were they so overlooked? Some blame Zero Hour, the record label shared by all three bands at the time, and their distribution deal with folk-friendly Rounder which landed their records in patchouli-soaked bookstores instead of the appreciative hands of adventurous nutters like you and me. (The silver lining is that you can pick up the entire Zero Hour catalog at CD exchanges for the price of a BK value meal.) For those who’d rather have history packaged for them nice and neat like (and can afford a king-sized value meal), Eenie Meenie Records last year reissued select tracks from those two Space Needle albums on one CD called Recordings 1994-1997). Enjoy the trip…down memory lane.
Amon Tobin has always transcended categorizations as a DJ or producer or even DJ/producer. He’s more like a filmmaker who spends so much time perfecting his soundtracks that he never gets around to making the movies. And that’s OK because, wow, those soundtracks are something to hear. Orchestral arrangements mingle with stormy soundscapes, beats without borders prop up artificially intelligent samples, sinister rhythms give way to buoyant melodies. The whole world is Tobin’s canvas, which makes it somewhat unfair to post only one track, the sublime opener to his most recent full-length, Foley Room. But hey, mathematically, one is infinitely more than zero, so take what you can get and let 
Not only are the Harvey Girls’ Hiram and Melissa very talented AND generous (they give away much of their prolific output to freeloaders like me) AND nice AND interesting, but it turns out they’re just plain good people: Declinate their most recent EP, will cost you some pocket change through the great web-only label 
Alex Delivery is comprised of members from former Eastern Bloc nations and Korea, so the harsh realities of totalitarian communism aren’t just a trendy design concept to them (even if they all met in art school), it’s a way of life. You can tell on Komad, which starts like the cast of Stomp lost one of their own and decided to throw him a New Orleans-style funeral march. Then, it keeps going… It’s borderline infuriating if you’re not in the right mindset for 10 minutes of dissonance, but if you allow yourself to get into Alex Delivery’s dystopian groove, you might just stomp along with them.
We’ve had so many requests to post CocoRosie that I don’t even know who to thank for the suggestion. What do these fans dig so much about CocoRosie? How about: cool beats & fractured rhythms, sonorous atonality & coherent dissonance, pageantry & experimentation, mythology & realism. Sierra and Bianca Casady — Rosie and Coco — do their own thing (that is, that thing that good artists do). This can be heard on their latest album, The Adventures of Ghosthorse & Stillborn, out now on Touch and Go Records.
I’m not sure if you guys have heard this band yet, the Arcade Fire? They’re Canadian, and kind of popular. They’ve got this new album, Neon Bible, and more media coverage than Anna Nicole Smith (well, maybe not), and Sam forced me to go see them live a few years ago and they were really, really good. It was a small venue, and we all sang the words to the songs even though we maybe had never heard them before. Anyway, here’s the opening track off that new record. Hope you like it… I like the second song better.
Kinetic Stereokids hail from Flint, Michigan (third most dangerous city in the U.S. and one of the most depressing), where I reckon they hear a lot of car alarms. But you know what they say…when life gives you car alarms, make samples. And why stop with car alarms? KSK’s debut Basement Kids is an enticing grab bag of found sounds and samples, as well as free-range rap, folk and rock guitar, drowsy ballads, garage beats, cuttin’ and scratchin’, experimental knob noodling, and other random bits. Beck employed similar means to reach a different end on records like Mellow Gold and Odelay. Here there is a melancholy, desperate, and spiteful undercurrent which makes even the rough edges compelling to listen to. It won’t necessarily get the party started but makes an excellent public transportation soundtrack.