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A popular theory—mostly amongst people who have very little authority to devise such theories—suggests that the vast majority of people have defined their musical vocabulary by the time they've reached their early 20s. What this generally means is that your "favorite" music—that which sets the standard for what will forever be your yardstick in all future listening—has been carved out in your impressionable high school and college years, and that most people will only understand music in the constructs of that time. This is why, for example, "Classic Alternative" radio stations have any legs to stand on—because most people have no interest in hearing things that challenge them beyond what they've understood in their youth. (This may also explain the popularity of Coldplay, but I'm not entirely sure.)

Another popular theory (or one popular with me, anyway) is that when a person plays rock music throughout their formative years, those persons—as they begin to unlock the previously magical mechanics of song structures—are much more likely to become disenchanted with the confines of pop music. In their adult life, these musicians—the smart ones, anyway—have mostly given up on the practices of "pop" music altogether; finding its structures rudimentary, and tedious to play. Instead, they gravitate toward the alienating, often indulgent structures of more complicated musicianship. This is also why traditionally good musicians typically have some of the worst taste in music.

So here's what I'm getting at: if only for the sake of my record collection, I'm sort of glad that I never learned to play an instrument as a kid. Because I'm perfectly contented in my boring ol' pop music. The boring-er the better, in fact. Because in my formative years, I spent most of my time listening molasses-y, hyper-intentional slowcore bands like Bedhead.

Bedhead began in Dallas in 1991, largely as a partnership between the brothers Kadane—Matt and Bubba. After the self-release of a seven inch, Bedhead aligned with one of Texas' only other notables—releasing WhatFunLifeWas, their debut, on King Coffey's (of the Butthole Surfers) Trance Syndicate label. Like most slowcore bands—Codeine, Low, and Galaxie 500 being the most notable—Bedhead's music was more defined by what it wasn't then what it was: it wasn't complicated, wasn't a spectacle, and most obviously, wasn't fast. It was dramatic if only for its sheer lack of dynamics. It was deliberate, melancholy, stark, thoughtful—and ultimately, sort of boring. But it was also lyrically brilliant and highly personal—just the sort of navel-gazey depression soundtrack I needed as I graduated into my 20s... by which time most of the bands that defined the sound had long broken up.

The band seemed sort of doomed from the get-go—always taking a backseat to Matt's academic career, the band only toured when he occasionally returned home to Texas from his new home in New York, with other members regularly stretching all across the globe for a variety of non-band pursuit. But in the whole of their seven-year career, Bedhead managed to release three full-lengths and two EPs (plus a couple of posthumous ones)—each successively better than the last—before calling it quits in 1998.

Their final proper album—the Albini-produced Transaction De Novo—was absolutely life-altering for me; giving me some of my first tastes at a true personal musical aesthetic with a vision that still maintains a lingering impression. It's bands like Bedhead that—sort of for the first time—introduced me to a music that I would want to make, and if I hadn't had the sort of patience for simplicity that I always associate with musical naivety, I may never have had the patience for them. Not that Bedhead were novices, by any means—they were just simple by intention. The sort of simple that most anyone could probably play. Not the sort of thing that dudes who play classical guitar are typically going to want to rock. And I sort of believe that even if I did eventually become virtuosic guitar player, I now have the sort of foundation in my life where the shitty taste in music won't necessarily come with it. Because when i was in my early 20s, I had bands like the Greatest Band of All Time on my side.

I have resisted writing about Lync, even though they are one of my beloved bands, because I'm really not sure what to say about them. They are an amazing band in a way that's hard to describe. Part of me thinks maybe you had to see them play, and watch the drummer, Dave, light his drum kit on fire while playing, like, "Two Feet in Front." But maybe that's snobbery. Anyone can like Lync.

Do we care about the requisite bio? Three boys from the suburbs of Seattle, mid-'90s, releases on K Records, only a band for a few years. You get it, right? Their album These Are Not Fall Colors is sublime. I spent so many hours listening to it during my high school years, it's not even funny. I remember seeing them play at the first Yoyo-a-Go-Go and Sam Jayne was wearing a Lone Ranger mask. He seemed like he was in on some kind of personal joke that I, at sixteen, so badly wanted to be a part of.

The other day I made a list of reasons why I have loved Lync for the past decade or so and here they are, transcribed from the back of my checkbook: Sam, the singer, kind of sounds like he has a stuffed up nose. Lots of lyrics about being bored. Singing "Satellite is now!!!" while driving in my best friend's car on weekends and not knowing--and not caring--if those were the correct lyrics. Good hair. A song called "Turtle" seemingly sung from the viewpoint of one, but whose lyrics are sort of also about relationships. General sense of urgency imbuing all their songs. You can totally dance to "Lightbulb Switch." The opening noted to "B" still gives me shivers.

I think that show in Olympia was maybe the last time I saw Lync, unless you count the all-asian Lync cover band, Chync, fronted by the illustrious George Chen, who I saw play on Halloween in San Francisco one year (and I sort of do). And really, I can say how urgent and meaningful and enduring Lync's songs are, but maybe Chync was all you needed to know about. Can you think of another band who has one album and a couple singles, around only a few years, who, half a decade after their demise, inspired an asian cover band fronted by George Chen? Only Lync, the Greatest Band of All Time.

Tonight I will see my favorite band play live for the last time. They will have 6 shows left after tonight, but this is it for me. It's been something like 15 or so live shows, 50 plus CDs, probably around 1000 songs. It's weird when you are forced to stop being obsessive about something. It's not like I don't understand why it's ending, and I'm not as obsessive as I once was, and Robert Pollard will continue to make music, but it's still a big deal. It's the end of an era in my life. So, for the next five days on GBOAT we will go through this bands career in painstainking detail and look at why they are the only one, the only and actual true Greatest Band of All Time. I'm going to go chronoligacally through the band(and Robert Pollard)'s musical history, and give you the extended primer. Today will be from conception (84 through Propeller in '92).

I know what you are saying/thinking...five days on these old washed up drunk, non sensical, rehash hack job artists that put out 2 good records in the mid 90s. My response to that is: what good has professing a cliched negative every boring music critic opinion ever done for anybody. This band/man has soo many more brilliant songs than anyone else in the world. This band is the epitome of rock n roll. They play for 3 hours every night, people chant their name, they have insanely rabid fans, they whip people into a frenzy, they play loud, sometimes sloppy, everyone sings along, and they party hard.

In so many ways Robert Pollard is like the dreams of every rock n roll fan. He's just some dude from a midwestern town (just outside of Dayton, OH) who was obsessed with music and record collecting. He thirsted for knowledge about bands in his town where he felt like nothing was going on. In school he made up fictional bands and drew album covers and made logos and t shirts for his bands that would never exist. He kinda knew how to play guitar and he sorta wrote songs. All of the rock fantasies just seemed like pipe dreams. He did start to play in some bands (a metal band called Anacrusis) and eventually started writing and recording his own music. He made his fake band, it was called Guided by Voices. He went to college, got a job teaching school, got married, and had some kids. He made some albums but they never got out of Dayton, Ohio. They played some shows early in the early 80s, but pretty much stopped playing live. They were still basically a fantasy band. So, how did it happen that a man in his late 30s became an icon in indie rock and has for the last 10 years consistently toured, been on a major label, and generally lived the life of an indie rock star. It seems like the stuff that Disney movies about aging pitchers who finally make it to the big leagues are made out of.

Guided by Voices started in 83 or 84, who really knows, I mean that was like 20 years ago. They started playing house shows in the living rooms and playing local bars to scant crowds. They stopped playing live around 87, I believe, and didn't play live again till 92 or 93. So, for the bands first ep and 5 albums this band was like this hidden secret. Seriously, no one knew. This is the period I am looking at today. The band's first release was the ep Forever Since Breakfast in 1986. I did not hear this ep until a couple years ago, because it wasn't reissued in Box, the box set that reissued the first 4 full lengths. A solid debut, but no amazing songs. It sounds like mid 80s indie rock music. It shows the first hints of Pollard's REM obsession that is pretty prevelant over the first few albums. There is some great melodies, and the stand out track has to be "Like I Do," which is the prettiest melody on the album but is covered in a layer or two of sounds of people talking and some other indinstinguishable noises. It is foreshadowing of Pollard not being afraid to use noise and non traditional recording styles to add texture and warmth to his recordings.

The Box was released in 1995 by scat records and was 5 cds comprised of GBV's first four albums along with a 5th disc of unreleased material. In my early GBV obsessed days I would eye Box lovingly in the record store, and I got it as a birthday present from a friend in 1997. It was so daunting but I waded through this old weird material. The experience was incredibly rewarding though, as some amazing songs exist on those albums and it felt like my favorite kind of history lesson.

Two albums were released in 1987, first was Devil Between My Toes, Guided by Voices' debut full length. It is a fairly dark and rugged affair. More a weird dark rock record than a pop record, Devil Between the Toes is sorta reminiscent of some of the weirder more recent Pollard stuff like Chereographed Man of War or the Circus Devils albums. Sandbox followed later in the year, and is a much different record than Devil Between My Toes. Sandbox is the most studio feeling of the early records. All of the early records were recorded in a studio and have a not so attractivity naivity when it comes to the production of them. The record is much lighter and poppier than the previous, and it probably the most REM influenced GBV record. Pollard hadn't even found his true voice that is so recognizable and at times sounds like a different man. Sandbox also has a little flavor of Husker Du. It's a weird record, but sometimes can sound so awesome.

Self Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia is the best of the bunch of the first four albums. It was released in 1989 and it definitely contains more great songs and feels more solid, the production is still a little goofy, but as an album is works pretty dern well. It has some classic numbers like "Chief Barrel Belly," which even though marred by some raunchy tones plays out something like a Little Wings' "Faith Children" with it's repeatable/chantable uplifting chorus of positivity. It seems like the best tracks on these early albums, like the beautiful "Liar's Tale" on this album, are the ballad type jams, because they are the least adorned and the beautiful songwriting can be the focus without getting gunked up by some regrettable production. "An Earful of Wax" is an epic jam that ends in a guitar solo that is Dino Jr. in nature, which is an amazing compliment.

The 4th LP released by Guided by Voices, and the final one included in Box is Same Place the Fly Got Smashed. This 1990 album was Pollard's attempt at a concept record. The album is engaging, but not a revolution, and the concept is sorta hard to grasp. It has something to do with someone being killed, and the trial and someone being electrocuted, but maybe every song doesn't have a role in the narrative, who knows. Accordingly, the number of killer songs continue to rise.

At this point, the band has been Pollard and a rotating cast including names like Eric Payton, Don Thrasher, Eric Comstock, and more GBV associated names like Jim Pollard, Mitch Mitchell, and Tobin Sprout, but it certainly has not been the "classic line-up" that people refer to of Pollard, Sprout, Mitchell, Demos, and Fennell. The band had gone through 4 albums and 1 ep wth literally no success, as defined by financial success or critical praise. It must have all seemed pretty pointless. They were getting no feedback other than a few friends and family. Therefore, Robert Pollard decided that their next album would be the last. He was feeling pressure from family members that this hobby was too expensive and not healthy for his family life. He wanted to make one more album, his last great one, so he collected all his great songs and went to make a record.

Propeller was originally only released in an edition of 500 LPs all with unique hand done covers, a truly special was to go out as a band. Something weird happened, though, because some of those 500 copies starting to get into the hands of influential people like Matt Sweeney of Chavez and Thurston Moore. GBV started to get just the teeniest, cutest amount of buzz. Why did this happen now? Was it just persistence or was it an accident or a fluke?? No way, Propeller was a huge leap for leap for the band. the first album where Pollard truly found his vocal vibe, and the productions are much better, and the songs are really all classics. The album opens with what sounds like a pretty large crowd chanting "GBV! GBV! GBV! GBV!" It seems like a cheap ploy, but it really works and gets you pumped. The album features the band's most driving and powerful rock anthems so far, with the epic opener "Over the Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox," and the punk "Exit Flagger," and equally as powerful but in a haunting way songs like "14 Cheerleader Coldfront," which is the first collaboration between Pollard and Tobin Sprout. It is the 1st album that really feels like a classic GBV album that could be identified as GBV as a casual fan. The band started to get a little attention from a few labels (up until this point the band had been releasing the albums themselves) and a few more reviews for the album. Soon thereafter to band agreed to work with Scat records. I believe GBV played their first live show in forever not too long after this at CMJ. They drove to New York just for the show, and Pollard was so nervous for the show he had to get real drunk to do it, and that started that tradition in the band. Propeller is a true turning point for the band, and maybe their biggest stepping stone to their soon to come fame.

5 albums. 1 ep. Over one hundred songs. GBV had been plugging away for years and they were on the brink of something huge. They were soon to become The Greatest Band of All Time.

note: sorry for the overwhelming amount of mp3s, but it's my favoirte band and it's been so hard just to whittle it down to this many. they have soo many songs, so trust me, these are good ones.

Stay tuned...tomorrow: Vampire on Titus, Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes, and a bunch of eps.

Again GBoAT brings you the regular honor of miss M. Meltzer. ENJOY, as per usual.

I would really like to write about Unrest, but my feelings about that band are too breathless and hysterical and upbeat to really put into words. And besides, I've spent the last several weeks in the Catskills doing not much else but watching deer eat apples in the yard, reading, and renewing my love for Air Miami. It all started when I decided a new landscape deserved a new jogging soundtrack. (Jogging to, like, Ludacris in upstate New York didn't feel right, you know?) I wish I could say I was one of those people who could just run, breeze through hair, just the music of nature, or whatever, but I am so not. Instead I just start to wonder why Adidas can make such perfect shoes for all manner of sports and yet their running shoes are just so not hot. I needed to focus and space out at the same time. I needed Air Miami.

At the end of the winter of 1994, Unrest met its untimely demise, a fact that still makes me sad, over a decade later. Fortunately, Mark Robinson and Bridget Cross, both of Unrest, decided their rather prodigious talents should not be wasted. In the spring of 1994 they formed Air Miami with Lauren Feldsher and Mike Fellows. They were sort of like Unrest--the same lush voices and chimey guitarbut slightly more new wave.

Their sole album (a double album, actually, released on Robinson's label Teenbeat and on 4AD in Europe in Japan), Me Me Me, contains the amazingly catchy "I Hate Milk" with the weirdly peppy chorus of "Please please, someone kill me soon." Also on the album is "World Cup Fever" an ode commemorating the World Cup's somewhat overlooked appearance in the US in 1994. How much do I love a band willing to sing about soccer? Um, a lot. These days I'm really obsessed with the Fuck You, Tiger EP. "See-Through Plastic" is a love song in need of a mix tape. I swear they recorded the rolling, lapping sounds of waves and put that on the song. That, or I'm missing California a little too much. "Warm Miami May" is a song so sunny its almost haunting, almost as if it's a sung from a grave. I've been listening to it on repeat.

I read somewhere that there's some kind of cherry grown in Michigan, or maybe it was Wisconsin, that is only available for a week or two every year, in the summer. And of course it's, like, the greatest cherry of all time. Not to get overly sentimental, but I guess I sort of think of Air Miami similarly. A band for only six months, they had such a fleeting existence, but they left us with a handful of perfect songs. Mark Robinson would go on to work his magic in Flin Flon, and Bridget Cross would do her solo albums, but Air Miami was so much more than a brief post-Unrest new wave moment, they were the Greatest Band of All Time.

Woody Allen calls them "kamikaze women": women ever on the collision course, always ready to crash their planes--and ready to crash them right into you. Years before the affected wilt of Chan Marshall, Lisa Germano gave a powerful voice to this tempestuous breed--a heart-tugged, empathic mess of addiction, id, and slight despair.

Germano's unlikely musical career began, in all places, as the violinist/fiddle player for John Mellencamp's Lonesome Jubilee band--a roll she happily fulfilled for seven years. After countless hours of session work with a number of high profile (and similarly adult-contemporary) artists, Germano decided, at the age of 30, to begin recording her debut solo record in 1991. On the Way Down From the Moon Palace resulted, a self-released full-length that fits a little too comfortably in line with her past musical associations for my tastes--but was enough to garner the attention (and, more importantly, the pocketbook) of Capitol Records, who soon signed Germano for the release of her next record.

It wasn't until Happiness, her major label debut, that Germano unleashed the beginnings of what was to become the trademark sound--a mix of confused, ethereal wash and rasped, muttered desperation that would see her through the length of her solo career. It's self-deprecation in spades; with depression, self-involvement, cynicism, and ambivalence adding up to a promising (if disjointed) sophomore rebirth. The record sold alright, but Germano wasn't satisfied with the final cut nor her label's meddlings, and in an unprecedented move, jumped ship for celebrated British "indie" 4AD--re-sequencing and expanding the record, and re-releasing it the following year.

That same year, Germano and 4AD released the record that would come to define Germano's creative peak--the critically-acclaimed, landmark concept record Geek The Girl. Easily among my favorite records of that decade, Geek is a chronicle of one girl's emotional and sexual awakening--a dark and disturbing narrative of willful manipulation, obsession, and, of course, desperate melancholy. the linernotes, however artless describe it as follows: "...a girl who is confused about how to be sexual and cool in the world but finds out she isn't cool and gets constantly taken advantage of sexually, gets kind of sick and enjoys giving up but at the end still tries to believe in something beautiful and dreams of still loving a man in hopes that he can save her from her shit life"). The songs are innocently confused, with awkward, stuttered sentimentality recalling the strains of adolescence--while traversing the weight of adulthood. The record's conceptual linchpin is an autobiographical tale of a stalker's attack called "...a psychopath," which mixes samples of a goose-bumping call to a 911 operator with the lyrics:

a baseball bat beside my bed
a thing of mace
I'll wait around
I hear a noise
well I hear something
you win again
I'm paralyzed

Geek the Girl is sad, sloppy, sort of unhinged--but like the best of her work, a convincingly bittersweet damnation of humanity's greatest curse--the indelible specter of hope.

The records that followed Geek--the convincing rollercoaster of 1996s Excerpts From a Love Circus, and all-to-crystal clear Slide from 1998 failed to really expand upon their predecessor's stark, brilliant vision--though each do contain some fine moments. Between the two albums, Germano took time out to record a record called Slush with the fellows from Giant Sand and Calexico under the name OP8--a record I have unfortunately never heard, despite a number of recommendations.

Following the surely disappointing Slide, Germano retired from solo performance, and was quickly dropped from 4AD. She moved to L.A. in 1999 to become a clerk at a book store--doing occasional session work with David Bowie, Neil Finn, that dog.'s Anna Wornaker, Iggy Pop, Sheryl Crow, and Jewel.

In 2003 she returned with Lullaby For the Liquid Pig, her best work since Geekon ArtistDirect's ineffable label. another concept record, Lullaby focuses on ambivalence in addictions--and ultimately, as always, desperate hope. I'm not sure what the future holds, as I think ArtistDirect has already gone belly up--but with any luck, Germano will continue her current stride. Her music does, admittedly, sometimes teeter on the brink of Adult Contempo--and (painful as it might be to admit) even Tori Amos comparisons aren't particularly far-fetched. but non-the-less, her career of near-relentless misery and self-defeat in face of commercial success could very well earn her the title of Greatest Trainwreck of All Time.

The first time I saw Young People will probably always be the most memorable. I had been hearing some rumblings about the band from a handful of friends (whose word on such matters was hit-or-miss at best), all of which thought that I would be interested in this "minimal, country-punk" band--a description that, under just about any circumstances, just sounded dreadful. Xiu Xiu was in town at the time--back when Cory and Lauren were in the band, back before Jamie lived in Seattle--and as they and some other friends all seemed to be caravanning down to Olympia for the show (my imagined "home-away-from-home" at the time), I decided to follow along.

we arrived at the Voyeur roughly an hour early, as the main attraction of the evening--Sleetmute Nightmute--was slated to play first. They played a pretty decent set (I think Alder was MIA at the time?), enough to validate the hours drive South, and so I decided to take a break as Growing began their set. I got back just in time to watch Young People set up. I immediately recognized Katie Eastburn as an impressive member of her former dance troupe, Janet Pants Dans Theeatre (who, incidentally, "borrowed" and capped a more-than-healthy dose of a whiskey bottle we had smuggled into a show we played with them)--but was preparing for the worst. It took roughly 17 seconds to be converted.

It had been so long since I had witnessed a band paint so much with so little. Maybe I never had. Young People make such a beautiful, thoughtful, reserved noise--a cleverly restrained construction that is just so volatily sparse, responding in perfect compliment to Katie's meandering vocal melodies--just long, endless phrases. The way they played their instruments with such simple precision... Young People were instantly everything I was missing in modern music. it felt so genuine. So amateurish. So totally inspiring. Now, while I might regularly toss around phrases like "Greatest Band of All Time" with reckless abandon--the word "inspiration" holds a much closer place in my heart. and Young People were Inspiring. Little did I know at the time that Young People--featuring Jeff Rosenburg, ex-Pink and Brown--were far from amateurs. But they just played TOO WELL to know what they were doing!

the Gossip followed YP with what was probably the best show I had ever seen them play, and in a sweaty heap, we all went home. On the way back, I shared my feelings on the evening's performance, and was met with some serious surprise from my companions. "They were just so Off tonight," cried the previously initiated. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. until I saw them play again. After my second Young People experience, I talked to Jeff briefly about my epiphany those several months before, and was met with the same surprise, "Oh God, that was a terrible show." But I was sold.

Young People came close to reviving my interest in live music--a feat that, in itself, suggests that they just might be the Greatest Band Of All Time.

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.

Second perhaps only to sweatshop labor, the creation of pop music appears to be the most joyless profession this cruel world has to offer. For all of their saccharine sensibilities and sugary harmonies, those pop musicians sure do seem like a dour bunch--or so suggests the ceaseless onslaught of drab, lifeless pop records that so regularly mar the surface of journalists' desks each year. It's enough to make you forget why you loved pop music to begin with. Well, if you please, allow me to offer you a reminder: ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Unicorns--the band that could save it all.

With their second release, last year's Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?, the Canadian two-cum-three piece has fallen upon a heap of justifiable critical acclaim--largely attributed to the band's seemingly left-field take on pop craftsmanship. And while theirs is a vision certainly unto itself, the Unicorns' clatter is hardly an innovative one. "So," you ask, "what exactly should I be shitting my pants about?" Shit for the same reason why the Unicorns appear to be confounding most critics. Shit for the new way. Shit because the Unicorns seem to have accomplished a feat long deemed impossible: capturing on tape an urgency that sounds as if it was as much fun to conceive as it is to listen to. And it's a rare achievement that a pop album can still feel this alive.

With hardly an album under their belt, the Montreal trio has managed an incredibly well-conceived indie pop record that somehow tightropes a balance of idiosyncratic composition, unadulterated joy, and clever cheek-tonguing--all while sidestepping the confines of a seemingly inevitable punch line. Though motivated in large part by a relentlessly silly fascination with the morbid, Who Will Cut... is charming enough to avoid toeing joke-rock territory--despite every line being delivered with a certain anxious zeal. It's just the kind amphetamine enthusiasm that reminds a person of what pop music supposed to feel like.

And it's this (reportedly) drug-fueled joie de vivre that doorstops such a charming dichotomy into the Unicorn's character, which is to say that, in living life to the fullest, dudes sure do come off like creeps. I saw them play for the first time earlier this year, and between each saccharine-sweet pop song (played with a shocking virtuosity gracefully subdued on their record) came a barrage of cleverly orchestrated heckling and much to the surprise of the audience, it was all coming from the wrong direction. There was public ridicule, physical assault, and even a report of sneaky on-stage coke use. Who knew these cute little Canadians would remind America what ridiculous rock spectacle was supposed to look like? I'll tell you: The Greatest Band Of All Time, that's who.

My partner in crime, Mr. Zac Pennington, astutely pointed out the obvious last week that the more obscure a band is the harder it is to track down photos of them on the internet for use in this humble music appreciation site. Well, Mr. Pennington, I toast to you, as I have found your theory to be dead on. In my searching for photos of the mid 90s rock back Further, I returned exactly 0 photos of the band. The only image I found (exhausting google image search and all the links in the first ten or so pages in a standard google web search) was the image you see to the left, the cover of their last release (Next Time West Coast). The other album cover you see below was the result of me taking a photo graph of the eight or so year old copy of their first album (Sometimes Chimes).

The insane obscurity of this band is really surprising. The leaders of Further, brothers Brent and Darren Rademaker, had been in Shadowland, a band that had put out two releases on major label (Geffen) in 89 and 90. Shadowland went through a lot of grief with Geffen forcing them to want to make Further so obscure (I am assume that their obscurity was mostly their own decision). The trouble with the major label even seeped into Further's material the first thing you hear on their debut album is a sample of somebody saying "and we got the shaft from the record company," with a song on their second album, Griptape, called "The Death Of An A & R Man." Shadowland was heavily influenced by 60's music, as to where Further was influenced by more contemporary peers like Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, Sebadoh, and Teenage Fanclub. Actually, in most reviews (of the few you can find) they are criticized for emulating these bands too closely. This can be a knock, but I also find it to be a positive for this band. Yes, they do sound like many bands of the day, but I think they combine different aspects of these bands wonderfully. In fact, they had a good sense of humor about being accused of ripping of their contemporaries by naming of their songs "furtherdoh-jr.q" (a reference to Sebadoh, Dinosaur Jr, etc.). Not the most original band but Further did make good music.

Further released two full lengths and three eps over their short three or four year career. The Rademaker brothers both went onto bands that were nowhere near obscure as Further, with Brent going on to the wonderful (60's influenced) Beachwood Sparks, and Darren going on to (60's influenced) The Tyde. Chris Gunst, the principal singer and songwriter for Beachwood Sparks played guitar in Further towards the end of Further's lifespan, and I actually read in one article the Jimmy Tamborello of Dntel, The Postal Service, Figurine, Strictly Ballroom, and more was in Further for awhile. All this evidence points to Further being willfully obscure. Further may not be the greatest band in the world when it comes to execution and originality but when it comes to effort that has to be put in to enjoy this band, concept (willful obscurity), and charm Further truly is The Greatest Band Of All Time.

Maybe there is something to be said for eclecticism, for diverging from the confines of a static musical formula, approaching every song as a rebirth. Sure. I'll buy that. But I think there's something equally as impressive in a rigid constriction that sieves in its design for a narrower, more laser-focused product with every effort. All of my favorites have always beaten the best ideas into the ground. And it's in this tapered avenue that Casiotone for the Painfully Alone's pop mournfully resides; a simple equation of towered, swap meet keyboards and beats, all set to the sentimental baritone of lone member Owen Ashworth. What sounds like a concept of somewhat limited potential, CFTPA is instead an experiment in the disparity of the consistent--the kind of flawless formula that composes all great pop bands.

In 1998, 22-year-old San Francisco zine author Owen Ashworth (best known at the time for the popular Wyatt Riot, a "fan zine" in tribute to Wyatt Cusack of Trackstar/Aisler's Set) decided--much to the dismissal of most of his peers--to begin playing out with his until then four-track only project, jokingly titled Casiotone For the Painfully Alone. The whole mess was something like a novelty act: a big guy in glasses sweating nervously, shaky hands dwarfing the tiny tinny junkstore keyboards at his fingertips as his graveled voice mutters simple stories under his breath. Song after song after song. But with the release of his debut record, Answering Machine Music (a record that I somehow manage to have three copies of in various formats), on his own short-lived label CassingleUSA, Ashworth made it clear that--in much the same way as previous GBoAT artists the Mountain Goats--repetition is the key to perfection.

Taking clear cues from some of John Darnielle's production ideals (with a dose of early Smog for good measure), Ashworth's recordings are awash in tape-hiss and over-driven treble. It's a sound that's a little difficult to stomach initially--with song after song a relentless onslaught of simple keyboard chords and filthy tape heads--but much like with most things marked by repetition, CFTPA yields a great deal with patience. Sentiment-soaked and deceptively simple--Ashworth chronicles in straightforward vignettes the middling malaise of adult mediocrity with pocket-sized portraits of discontented twentysomethings.

In 2000 Ashworth was approached by respected German electronic label Tomlab, who would soon release Pocket Symphonies For Lonely Subway Cars, Casiotone's sophomore album. Surprisingly more mature than his debut (especially considering that--sonically--it's nearly identical), Pocket Symphonies is themed around a loose concept of travel and escape; a vision that proves a perfect canvas for Ashworth's simple narratives. Twinkle Echo, its follow-up, is perhaps slightly less conceptually realized, but never-the-less features some of Ashworth's best material to date.

Over the years Casiotone For the Painfully Alone has toured extensively with the likes of the Rapture and Xiu Xiu, and have built themselves a modest (really--way too modest) cult nationally. Though Ashworth had initially intended Twinkle Echo to be the band's swansong, he has recently reconsidered his hasty decision with plans to begin working on new material sometime in the near future--though the future of Casiotone For the Painfully Alone still remains uncertain.

ramblerambleramble.

For his stranglehold on my CD player over the last few years, and for being just a damned good friend to me, Casiotone For the Painfully Alone is this morning deservedly crowned the Greatest Band of All Time.