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Independent's Day
Pinback The
Thermals This month we return from our self-indulgent declaration of essential summer albums to turn you on to a pair of bands that you won't likely drop in your Discman at the beach. The Pinback Paradox Chiming. Melodic. Dreamy. These are the descriptors most used in the Team Clermont press kit supporting the San Diego duo's latest offering - descriptors that would conjure flashbacks to Echo & the Bunnymen, middle-stage Cure, or maybe, more recently, BT. Problem is, none of those comparisons work. not even close. Offcell, Pinback's third release and second EP is a suitable sampler of a sound that has the indie rock pundits tongue-tied in their efforts to find a parallel - or even an accurate adjective. Welcome to the Dante's Hell of "Fuck, yeah! We're unique..." And "Fuck no, our record sales suck." The band's electronic foundation is evident from the opening chords of "Microtonic Wave" but don't even contemplate dancing to it; the tempo never elevates. Offcell marches along through 30 minutes of even-keeled experiments in singular notes and singular sounds resting comfortably on a computer-generated foundation. And it's one of the more compelling discs I've heard this year. After a cursory listen, Offcell ended up beneath a pile of promo packs until I felt obligated to generate a review this month. Now it hasn't left my G: drive since. It's gone cover to cover at least 30 times in the past three weeks. The only problem is that this sound, this difficult-to-describe-in-text sound, is like a Tuesday-night girlfriend: You can spend countless hours enraptured with her skills and complexities, but you just know you'll never be able to introduce her to your friends on the weekend. The Thermals Think Small If the Thermals hate Jack White and Julian Casablancas, you can't really blame them. It will be impossible for them to avoid being lumped into the garage rock renaissance movement and held to all the scrutiny that entails. Because when you record your debut album on a four-track cassette recorder in your bedroom, you sound like, well, a garage band. But there is no "Last Nite" or "Fell in Love with a Girl" on More Parts Per Million - and there probably shouldn't be. The Themals drop 13 verse-chorus-verse, guitar-driven songs in less than 28 minutes, and - like Pinback, although 180 degrees different musically -- you'll either really appreciate them or you won't. At about 2:05 per song, at least they won't waste your time. And if you like to rock out to honest, no frills jams, the Thermals stand and deliver. |
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