Guest Writer: Scott Goodwin
Lifetime Achievement Award: Unwound
Posted by: steve | From: June 13, 2004
Everyday Is Like Sunday. Like today, for example. So here's Scott Goodwin with your weather and traffic:
I don't think the force I felt upon listening to Unwound's Repetition for the first time in my senior year of high school can ever be understated. So relentless was my obsession over ever detail of the album that it seemed a story demanded to be imagined. And I still believe that, if you listen hard enough, you can feel the claustrophobia of the Olympia, WA basement where the songs took shape, simply though the work's brilliance alone. These basements, to my late teenage mind, were places known through the stories of obscure rock bands and youth culture insurrections, a site of modern myth. The album brought to mind the surreal quality of distances - open roads and the numbing effect of touring. In this sense I couldn't help but hear songs like "Last Exit" and "Go to Dallas" and "Take a Left" as encouragements to escape into the open expanses of America proper, which for a student on the cusp of leaving home and starting anew was alluring.
Coincidentally, Unwound was in its early stages at roughly the same time in the lives of Justin Trosper and Vern Rumsey. Raging out of Tumwater High School just in time to latch on to Olympia's burgeoning rock scene, original drummer Brandt Sandeno left shortly after the recording of what would be released years later as the band's "lost" self-titled album. Recruiting Bloomington, IN transplant Sara Lund, formerly of Oly fuck-all Witchypoo, the band found a stable line up that would propel them (at times augmented by Sandeno and the ubiquitous David Scott Stone among others) through seven full length releases, roughly a dozen singles, and a ten year run as one of more innovative acts among the dull, faceless creations of the genre that would become the "indie rock" cash cow.
The band's final album, released months before I would arrive in my new home just north of the band's residence in Olympia, suggested a change in direction through inversion. Leaves Turn Inside You exchanged volume and force for nuance, though the band droned on in its own sprawling way. The tension within this record seemed to pit guitarist Justin Trosper against the other two members of the band. While Lund's precise drumming and Rumsey's familiar bass sought to mark time and make it tangible, the extended guitar phrases and vocal drawl seemed to distort any interval.
Though this album found the idea perfected, this confusion of time had always existed as part of the band. Think about it: nearly every song seems longer than it is. Repetition's rave-up "Murder Movies" is scarcely two minutes but is loaded down with the same textures and passion found in the band's six minute laments. It should also be remembered that in 1991 when Unwound released its first LP, Fake Train, the record included a 13 minute noise-hardcore outburst "Valentine Card/ Kantina/Were, Are, and Was," while West Coast contemporaries like Spazz were writing similarly heavy songs pushing 20 seconds.
As for any criticism leveled at a band that showed continual interest in long form songs, repetitive phrases, and meditative structures, it would seem to be a moot point to claim that all their songs sound the same. What kind of band would name their masterpiece Repetition, if this weren't true? It's between the stolid pulse and explosive arch in Unwound's songs have their best moments. But if trivia will clinch the band's title, so be it: What kind of band inaugurates labels like Kill Rock Stars, Troubleman Unlimited, and Gravity Records with their first releases? Surely, the Greatest Band of All Time.
dude wer can i find Unwound lyrics!!! its driving me crazy
Posted by: Alessandro at July 29, 2005 10:07 PM
I not bragging,so dont get the wrong idea, but i was fortunate enough to tour w/the unwound for about 2 weeks back in ,I think it was, 1996.The band I was a roadie for was called THE GREAT UNRAVELLING and being that they were also on kyl rok starz they were asked to open. All i wanted to say was vern,sara, and justin all seemed to have a really neat chemistry on & off stage. their sense of humor was very approachable and friendly. I wish they were still around.
Posted by: norrad at October 23, 2005 09:26 PM
i was a faithful mormon boy who was introduced to unwound via the inclusion of 'lucky acid' on a mixtape made by jennifer, an older wiser co-worker who proved to be a much better savior than jesus christ. anyhow, i tried to see them at the velvet elvis twice when i was 16 or 17 but both times the show had sold out by the time i arrived. finally got to see them in olympia a couple months later and it cemented a deep, wild, almost inexplicable love affair with music. i've probably been to a few thousand shows in my life and the only time i've ever cried was during an extended, transcendent version of "kantina/were are is or was"... unwound remind me a lot of sonic youth in that there is something in the combination of tones and energy that, despite whatever outward emotional distance (i think it's a protective layer), resonates so deeply inside of me i literally feel "one" with the music. also unwound was an amazing introduction to the phenomonal undergrounds that were happening at the time: huggy bear and pussycat trash/slampt and the u.k. riot grrrls, the whole olympia/DC enchilada, san diego and santa cruz and the whole gravity records thing, et cetera - all bands that you could figure out from the thankyou lists on their first couple of records, a main reason why thankyou lists can be really useful..... anyhow, thankyou scott goodwin for rightfully recognizing one of the greatest bands of all time... love, chris p.
Posted by: chris at January 17, 2006 05:44 PM
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they were not from this world!
Posted by: mark at May 11, 2005 10:25 PM