Fake Train

Unwound | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 25, 1994)
• Original Release Date: July 27, 1993
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Kill Rock Stars
• ASIN: B00000372B
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #144,244 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Noisy, low budget, yet very good., May 13, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Fake Train (Audio CD)

This was Unwounds first album for a while until they released an earlier recorded album 2 years later. I still think of it as their debut. With then new drummer Sarah Lund, Unwound immediately established their noisy, experimental brand of indie rock. Some of the songs sound almost punk while others have melodious guitar hooks and quiet, hushed vocals. Actually, all the songs have either hushed vocals or really loud screaming but it fits with their "mellow now, exploding later" sound. The best song on the album and possibly the best song they have ever written is "Kantina". The song starts out with a rumbling bass line and moves into their regular quiet, loud routine until the end which branches out into an ethereal, weird guitar experiment that is repetitive but not boring even though it stretches out for minutes. A great album to start listening to Unwound with.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars There are two Unwounds..., May 20, 2010

By 

Gabe (Denver, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fake Train (Audio CD)

There are two Unwounds. First, there's the gorgeously restrained and broodingly brilliant Unwound you can hear in their final album - "Leaves Turn Inside You." Then . . . there's the "Fake Train" Unwound. This album represents the other end of Unwound's creative spectrum. It's messy and quite sloppy at times, but the enthusiasm and sheer exuberance are just dripping off this one. LICK IT UP! The first and third songs ('Dragnalus' and 'Nervous Energy') deserve just as much to be anthems of disaffection and boredom as any chart-topping Nirvana song. 'Lucky Acid' brims with a mixture of sloppy punk and noise rock feedback. And if you really like feedback, the epic 'Valentine Card...' is a spectacular three-part, 14-minute rock concerto of sorts, capped off with several minutes of ear-splitting feedback laid over a gorgeously repetitive guitar/bass melody.

Without going on to describe each song, I'll just get to the meat of it. Unwound are masters of mixing and meshing chaos and beauty. It's their ability to go from 100 to 0 and back to 100 with such ease an grace. It's their ability to embody the grunge "I don't care" attitude and blend it with the edginess of punk and the experimentalism of prog-rock and jazz. But isn't it a waste of time trying to categorize what's simply unique? Truth be told, Unwound just know how to write great songs that don't often fit neatly into one genre.

If this sounds appealing, and you want to delve into Unwound's gritty early sound, THIS is the album to get. It's what you've always wanted in an album - raw but beautiful, experimental but cohesive, and (perhaps most important for newcomers) seminal but ACCESSIBLE.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars fake train soars, November 29, 2003

By 

Justin Marshall (NY, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fake Train (Audio CD)

Unwound has been described by a friend of mine as a band closely following Sonic Youth's career, albeit in an even more sonic and dischordant manner. I completely disagree, but if he is right, this is Unwound's "Daydream Nation". There is brilliant writing here, and a great "transcendant" album--from minimalist post-punk to complex and full indie rock. Excuse me for the simplification here, but I find it to be generally true that some of the best albums are in-between styles (pavement being the best example), and this is no exception. This is great listening for a subway ride, a break-up, a cataclysmic natural disaster.