Customer Reviews

Speed

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Crain, hailing from the Louisville, Kentucky scene that spawned David Grubbs prolific web of projects and groups as well as incestuously making ties with every other project occurring: from Squirrel Bait to Bastro to Gastr del Sol and the amoebic offshoots of Slint ("Tweez" is remarkably close to this album) and Tortoise and King Kong (which is unknown to me) while around the same time there was activity of a -slightly- different vein in the shapes of Rodan, June of 44, Shipping News, Rachel's, and again, with Grubbs peripheral touch to Codeine. These bands all share a degree of qualities that overlap and compliment one another both sonically and aesthetically. This is sharp, deliberate instrumentation with intellectual wit, edge, and punctual articulation that clearly understood the structure of space and rhythmic syncopations. There is a sensitivity to grooves and a jagged cohesion that sets this set of nineties music participants apart from the northwestern sound of the time, though not entirely detached. Other bands that seem to carry a similarly glowing torch like the Touch and Go/Skin Graft/Chicago scene (where a lot of that relocated, like Tortoise and Gastr -with the addition of O'Rourke- and so on, the correlation with all these groups is strikingly dense and compatible); Jesus Lizard, Dazzling Killmen, Cheer-Accident, Shellac, and Naked Raygun (with arguably similar packaging art), Merge/Chapel Hill with Superchunk and Polvo, the hints of Sonic Youth and for Crain's sake, Helmet, Unwound, a little Don Caballero, Smashing Pumpkin's "Gish" (another Chicago band, if people remember) and some Karate for good measure. Subsidiary musical movements would occur a few years later paving way for a sound-a-like lineage with Deftones and the late nineties micro-surge of hardcore-blended emo-tech in the Midwest landmark Milwaukee; i.e. Insidious, Managra, Tintoretto, Hero of A Hundred Fights- whom all took a cue from Washington Dischord records and Minor Threat, Fugazi, Faraquet, the likes. Yet still, a dash of SST (The Minutemen get to be a part of every band that came after them, and Black Flag or Rollins Band). If even SOME of those bands have scraped the insides of your ears, there are some indications as to the mechanics of this well-oiled artillery force known as Crain. Though, the intension is not to pin down Crain as derivative or unoriginal, merely connect a strong bond with a whole generation and subsequent generations that are something of conscious rockers; knowing when to unleash the energy, deft in creating tension and rewarding with not-too-predictable release. Go figure the majority of all of these acts have been graced with the technical support of Steve Albini, himself. I find these not so disparate clusters roped together, especially the Midwest groups, to be about the sonic equivalent to concrete and being bashed against the sidewalk never felt so acutely refreshing. Though the roots are visible, the trunk support for this mass of like-minded musicians is solid enough to station itself in the often dense tundra-like turf centralized between the coasts. I kindly ask 'The Boss' to step aside and make way for true 'working man's rock'; this is the rhythm section to a carpenter's garage with power tool drumming and subsonic bass nails, with the welder's metallic shrapnel guitars, topped off with hardhat vocal delivery. A muscular record with an obvious muscle -the brain- used to avoid the generic chuggidy-smudge of testosterone-filled jock-rock-blockheads. A single fisted air tug for Temporary Residence Limited for rereleasing this for the masses...

i found a promo disk of this album at a bookstore in ojai caifornia called barts books. the onl thing i knew about the band was the producer, steve albini. this is a very good album, hard hitting, emotional, and experimental. i did some research and this is supposed to be a influential album for post-punk, emo, and hardcore. any label you put on it, its good