Pinebender - Things are About to Get Weird
(Ohio Gold)

Here is how the record begins: a laconic guitar bit lazily floats over muted drums for nearly five full minutes before C. Hansen steps on his distortion pedal and lets loose. Then he scales it back again. It's quiet and then loud and then quiet. You can probably count on it getting loud again. Predictable? Maybe, but who cares? Pinebender are dishing up some really good old-fashioned indie rock, just like mom used to make.

The opening track, "There's a Big Bag of Weights in the Back of My Car," is a sort of overture for the rest of the album. It visits the various volume levels; at times it is driving and at others it is reflective. There is a vocalist somewhere in there muttering about being confused. Its simple, yet it's a 12-minute epic opus with various parts, peaks, valleys, climaxes, and meltdowns. It does indeed get loud again, in fact it gets really, really loud. By the last few minutes of the song, it's no longer about melody or rhythm, but white hot squall. And it sounds damn good.

There are guitars that are clean and guitars that are dirty. There are songs that are catchy and fun and songs that are furious and roar. There are songs that are good and there are none that are bad. One might compare them to Small 23, except they never really did anything this good. As far as quality goes, they are more like Superchunk at their peak, during the On the Mouth/Foolish period. But they don't really sound anything like Superchunk or those records. So, it's more like Small 23 if they could write songs that burned and rocked and pierced like Superchunk did.

So quit whining about how no one puts out solid, regular, every day rock and roll albums anymore and check out Pinebender. They've got hooks and riffs. They've got a good sense of space and rhythm. They know how to work it when they've hit on something good, and, most importantly, they know how to crank it up.

dave christensen 2000 aug 4