Archers Of Loaf: The Speed Of Cattle

ARCHERS OF LOAF: THE SPEED OF CATTLE (1996)

1) Wrong; 2) South Carolina; 3) Web In Front; 4) Bathroom; 5) Tatyana; 6) What Did You Expect?; 7) Ethel Merman; 8) Funnelhead; 9) Quinn Beast; 10) Telepathic Traffic; 11) Don't Believe The Good News; 12) Smokin' Pot In The Hot City; 13) Mutes In The Steeple; 14) Revenge; 15) Bacteria; 16) Freezing Point; 17) Powerwalker; 18) Backwash.

I would never say that Archers Of Loaf are the great lost gem of the mid-Nineties, much more de­serving of the attention of every self-respecting Homo sapiens than the publicity-puffed Nirvana. Nevertheless, they certainly deserve to at least be placed in the «lost and found» locker, and their career has been consistent enough to make me want to try out, as a postscriptum of sorts, this ear­ly collection of odds and ends, originally released in between the success of Vee Vee and the re­lative creative stagnation of Airports.

For all the good fans, this is an essential purchase, since there are no overlaps with the band's re­gular studio albums. Instead, Speed Of Cattle collects a bunch of early singles (including single versions of ʽWrongʼ and ʽWeb In Frontʼ, different from LP versions), two tracks from the rare EP Vs. The Greatest Of All Time, and some studio outtakes that cannot be found anywhere else. The question is — does anybody other than the truly devoted fan need it?

Frankly, I don't think so. One thing is certain: Speed Of Cattle will not open your eyes on any aspect of the Archers that you do not already know about. All of the songs are in the band's usual style, but very few of them accentuate the famous «guitar weaving» style. For instance, ʽSouth Carolinaʼ is occasionally considered somewhat of a lost semi-classic, but all I hear is generic, bombastic alt-rock, thoroughly boring for three out of three and a half minutes (a «woman tone» guitar enters the stage towards the end and makes things a little more colorful, but I am just men­tioning this for honesty's sake).

Special cases include ʽBathroomʼ, one of the band's fastest tunes, probably the closest they ever came to «hardcore», but with a nifty psychedelic guitar break; ʽQuinn Beastʼ, where the second guitar somehow falls under a Duane Eddy influence, playing surf-like chords against the usual sea of distortion; and the instrumental ʽSmokin' Pot In The Hot Cityʼ, which begins with a cozy little country-rock riff and then goes on being relatively gentle and melodic throughout.

Everything else sticks together in the same sort of mush as All The Nation's Airports: some­times a bit slower, sometimes a bit faster, sometimes yelly-screamy, sometimes quiet-melancho­lic-like. Listening to this record, in fact, gives away the Archers Of Loaf's fatal mistake — they should never have stuck to this image of «hard rocking» people, because they are too pensive for that. I can tolerate sixty minutes of leaden, by-the-book distorted «rock» chords from the Ramo­nes (even late-period Ramones), because it is their lifeblood. But nobody will convince me that these chords are the lifeblood of Eric Bachmann and Eric Johnson, because they could never rock as hard as Nirvana or Alice In Chains — and when you cannot rock out as hard as your competi­tion, it is better not to rock out at all. Otherwise, you'll just be moving along at the «speed of cat­tle», and why should anyone want that? Thumbs down.

Archers Of Loaf: Seconds Before The Accident

ARCHERS OF LOAF: SECONDS BEFORE THE ACCIDENT (2000)

1) Dead Red Eyes; 2) Fabricoh; 3) Vocal Shrapnel; 4) Web In Front; 5) Let The Loser Melt; 6) Strangled By The Stereo Wire; 7) Fashion Bleeds; 8) You And Me; 9) Might; 10) Revenge; 11) South Carolina; 12) Lowest Part Is Free; 13) Plumbline; 14) Wrong; 15) White Trash Heroes; 16) Chumming The Oceans.

A last-minute souvenir from the Archers' final tour, this was all recorded in November 1998 at some small joint in Chapel Hill. This was not the band's first live recording: an EP called Vitus Tinnitus had already appeared in 1997, but it was rather short and went out of print fairly quickly. This one, on the other hand, is much longer, and, rather democratically, includes comparable shares of selections from all of the band's four studio albums (as well as two tracks from a rare studio EP released in 1994) — a decent, deserving live retro­spective that should be in every serious fan collection.

There are, however, serious problems as well, that go way beyond track selection (which I per­sonally could live with, even if I like the Archers' evens far more than their odds). First, the stu­dio arrangements on the original albums were often interesting in terms of overdubs, with three- or four-part guitar melodies contributing to the sound; obviously, when playing live, these com­plex textures are reduced to barer basics, and, since sometimes these overdubs were almost like the main selling point of the song, the effect is predictable. Second, even those instruments that are played on stage are recorded atrociously. Play any single one of them next to the studio ori­ginal and see the difference at once. The «melodic» guitar that is supposed to whine, chirp, and jangle next to the grungy chord guitar bears the heaviest brunt — definitely out there, but barely audible most of the time. But even the heavy guitar is unpleasantly muffled.

With these obvious and rather glaring defects, are there any compensating benefits? Certainly not from a surplus of energy: it's been a long, long time since well-behaved rock bands restrained their passion in the studio, only unleashing the full fury onstage. Chapel Hill did not get it that much louder or more dynamic than the recording studios did. Nor are there any interesting chan­ges (other than simplified arrangements) to any of the songs. Nor do the band members show a particularly clever or original sense of humor (such bits of banter as "we have an alien on stage" or "if I have an aneurysm tonight, it's out of gratitude" are more or less their peak). Nor does the audience help lighten up the spirits — the crowd must have consisted of long-term fans, some of whom seem to have already sung all the lyrics to ʽYou And Meʼ way before its lengthy, ear-killer bass intro gives way to the vocals, but the Archers' music is not arena-rock and has very little to do with crowd-pleasing in general.

Come to think of it, it really beats me why I am tempted to give the album a thumbs up, despite there being nothing objectively redeemable about it. Maybe it is because the most important ele­ment of White Trash Heroes managed to blow over here more or less untouched: its autumnal sadness and a certain sense of «when the music's over, turn off the light... and go back to your boring function-fulfilling in this world, whatever it may be». Even the earlier songs from Icky Mettle and Vee Vee seem to have been slightly irradiated with this quiet, unassuming depression. I almost think I might be giving this positive judgement out of sheer pity, regardless of whether anyone needs it — here's to a band that tried to make it, and then spent their last two years co­ming to terms with their own doom. And, maybe, the world's as well.

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Archers Of Loaf: White Trash Heroes

ARCHERS OF LOAF: WHITE TRASH HEROES (1998)

1) Fashion Bleeds; 2) Dead Red Eyes; 3) I.N.S.; 4) Perfect Time; 5) Slick Tricks And Bright Lights; 6) One Slight Wrong Move; 7) Banging On A Dead Drum; 8) Smokers In Love; 9) After The Last Laugh; 10) White Trash Heroes.

Reportedly, the Archers Of Loaf found themselves artistically blocked after touring in support of Airports, and I easily believe that — I mean, who wouldn't, after having to play songs from the dullest record of one's career over and over again? Eventually, it was decided that, if the band were to go on, it would have to change. The heavy fate of the Artist who did not, from the out­set, list «stability of sound» as one of the major goals in his career: either you change, or you lose the right to that capital A, not to mention an A+ in Robert Christgau’s next blurb.

The exact change from Airports to White Trash Heroes is not easy to describe, though. Every­one acknowledges it, and the band actually lost some of the fan support because of it, but nobody can really summarize it in one or two sentences. It's not as if they brought in a host of guest mu­sicians or a symphonic orchestra, started writing twenty-minute long suites, or covering Frank Sinatra on authentic XVIIth century instruments. Individually, many of the songs are not that dif­ferent from the classic Archers sound. But altogether, White Trash Heroes definitely constitutes one of their finest offerings, and I'd probably rate it second in my personal ranking for today.

What do you do when you understand your own mediocrity as a God-sent troubadour, yet cannot resist the temptation of making, in the simple hope that you’ll maybe get lucky next time? Easy — you turn upon yourself in all your wretched mediocrity, and intensify the only thing you're sure of. (I realize I have by now offended every devoted Archers fan on the planet, but, as a fair­ly mediocre writer myself, I somehow feel a bond between myself and the band, to be honored by admitting it). Who are the «White Trash Heroes»? Take a wild guess.

The seven-minute long title track is structured as a long, repetitive, part-time Bob Dylan, part-time Lou Reed visionary epic, pinned to the simplest of hooks for heavier effect. It drags on slowly and drearily, on the wings of a simple synth line and a sea of anthemic feedback, until the voice finally fades out and all that is left is the murky electric guitar pushing the theme forward for an extra two minutes. It is the most perfect conclusion to the Archers' career that could ever be desired: a song that declares the ugliness of it all through a long series of half-baked, hu­mor­less poetic metaphors, being ugly as hell, but somewhat mesmerizing, in itself.

Even before you get to it, though, you have to endure a sea of industrial bleakness. ʽFashion Bleedsʼ would be just another grungy slab of grunge, if not for the annoying, ear-piercing electro­nic bleep sub-melody that eventually generates itself out of the muck, claiming your attention so that it can tamper with your digestion system. On ʽDead Red Eyesʼ, all singing is done in a whiny, high-pitched manner, reminiscent of Neil Young and his endless complaints about life's miseries. On ʽPerfect Timeʼ, the lead guitar line is set to «dirge mode» almost continuously — now we can finally understand the fans, who were waiting for some punch-the-wall attitude and got some lie-down-and-die attitude instead. ʽOne Slight Wrong Moveʼ justifies the «industrial» tag explicitly: it starts off with factory-style banging and clanging, and culminates in the electronically encoded refrain ("a hundred million could be wrong") that, again, could serve as an irritant in the eyes of all the admirers of Archers as a «live» band, but is actually well in line with the overall moods and temperatures on the record.

In the middle of it all, it is easy to lose trace of ʽSmokers In Loveʼ, a brief instrumental track that should actually be counted among their finest creations — a bit of melodic «art-grunge» which shows excellent teamwork and expression. Your best chance of remembering it is probably thro­ugh the fat distorted opening riff, but the guitar- and even basswork on the main section are noti­ceable as well. By now, the Archers can not only «weave» their trademark double/triple-guitar patterns, they can do this with a stern, robotic air (must have been listening to lots of Krautrock), making the same kind of progress here that one usually sees in the evolution from «punk» to «post-punk». It's not entirely new, but with these guys, it works.

Overall, White Trash Heroes could really signify a transition to something more... purposeful, I guess, than the early Archers albums. It is that close to turning Bachmann into one of those «ge­neration spokesmen» — with all the debt that the title track owes to previous generation spokes­men, it belongs in the 1990s, a decade that did not really have its own Bob Dylan or Neil Young or Lou Reed, except for the original old ones. But maybe it was exactly this «looking back» thing that did not work out, I don't know. In any case, even if White Trash Heroes was an artistic dead end — and the band did not survive it — it still remains a curious and touching artistic dead end to revisit, and the title track is as good a «self-destructive goodbye note» as any. Thumbs up.

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Archers Of Loaf: All The Nations Airports

ARCHERS OF LOAF: ALL THE NATIONS AIRPORTS (1996)

1) Strangled By The Stereo Wire; 2) All The Nations Airports; 3) Scenic Pastures; 4) Worst Defense; 5) Attack Of The Killer Bees; 6) Rental Sting; 7) Assassination On X-mas Eve; 8) Chumming The Ocean; 9) Vocal Shrapnel; 10) Bones Of Her Hands; 11) Bumpo; 12) Form And File; 13) Acromegaly; 14) Distance Comes In Droves; 15) Bombs Away.

For their third release, the Archers got picked up by a major label — Elektra — but the fact pro­duced far more fuss in the press than change in the sound. Not that there isn't any change in the sound from Vee Vee to All The Nations Airports. There is. But it has nothing to do with labels. And yes, it is a sucky sort of change.

Essentially, to me this sort of change suggests that Vee Vee, after all, was a fluke. Somehow, on that album, the band managed to align their mutual configuration in the only possible, and very subtle way, that could make them stand out. They probably did not pay too much attention to this lucky turn of events — and, when it was time to reconvene for the third album, fell back on the old configuration of Icky Mettle. Only now they lack even that initial punch of freshness which can sometimes elevate mediocrity to illusionary heights. Results? Boring. Dull as hell.

Instead of good music, Bachmann now concentrates almost exclusively on the lyrics, which get increasingly «serious» and «messagy», without telling us explicitly what it is about them that could make Bachmann an individual presence on the «rock poet» scene. "Rental sting / The cus­tomer is king / Waste your life, waste your life / Little things can cost you everything" — here is a particularly telling example of what it's all about. If it clicks with you on paper, it will click with you on your stereo. If it does not click on paper, I have a hard time imagining how All The Nations Airports could ever occupy a special place in your heart.

That the individual guitar parts are rather dull is no surprise; the surprise is that they seem to have lost the ability to turn their twin guitar interplay into something larger than the sum of its parts. It is most evident on such lumbering instrumental monsters as ʽAttack Of The Killer Beesʼ, which, by all means, should have been titled ʽAttack Of The Killer Slothsʼ instead — one of the guitars does produce a bee-like buzz all the way through (wailing like crazy on one note while your ears are slowly and painfully being electrocuted), but the others are just droning stoner grunge chords over and over again in an «atmospheric» manner that is neither pleasant, nor even novel.

They are still capable of occasionally coming across mildly interesting themes, when they get off their main saddle horse: ʽBumpoʼ is a fun instrumental, built upon a dark psycho-folk theme that is half-Jefferson Airplane, half-James Bond theme (although even ʽBumpoʼ gets less attractive and more generic once the volume levels are pushed up and the minimalistic folk guitar becomes drone-oriented). And there are tiny bits and pieces that suggest ways of greatness — for instance, the way the self-titled track begins, with its siren-like bass notes and pick scraping frenzy, before it embarrassingly turns into just another Bachmann sermon.

But tiny bits are one thing, and preaching, lying at the heart of 75% of the songs on here, is ano­ther. ʽAssassination On X-mas Eveʼ, for instance, simply continues the theme of ʽDeath In The Parkʼ — «bad shit is going on, and nobody genuinely gives a damn». There is no harm in flog­ging that old horse to death, particularly since the horse is immortal, but wouldn't it be nice if the accompanying music were even the least bit memorable? Or, at least, exciting? Come on now, this shit is just excruciatingly dull. I can't even hear that second «feminine» guitar all that well, bring it higher up in the mix or something (not that it looks as if it were doing anything even re­motely approaching the occasional explosiveness on Vee Vee).

As ʽBombs Awayʼ, a minimalistic two-finger piano instrumental, closes the record, I cannot help but wonder how these things happen exactly — what are the factors that determine such jumps in quality between albums that are essentially based on the same styles and values. The number of cups of coffee drunk before the morning sessions? Toothaches? Undetected radioactivity ex­po­sure? Talent drain, where «talent» = an objectively measurable internal fluid? Whatever. Regard­less of the answer, All The Nations Airports is a significant departure from Vee Vee, and, in my head, the vector is strictly downwards, so thumbs down accordingly.

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Archers Of Loaf: Vee Vee

THE ARCHERS OF LOAF: VEE VEE (1995)

1) Step Into The Light; 2) Harnessed In Slums; 3) Nevermind The Enemy; 4) Greatest Of All Times; 5) Underdogs Of Nipomo; 6) Floating Friends; 7) 1985; 8) Fabricoh; 9) Nostalgia; 10) Let The Loser Melt; 11) Death In The Park; 12) The Worst Has Yet To Come; 13) Underachievers March And Fight Song.

Although Icky Mettle usually gets all the hoopla, I personally find the follow-up, Vee Vee, to be far more interesting. As it often happens, the sophomore effort is a little less aggressive, a little more experimental, a touch more oriented at subtleties and a touch less at basic punch. But if The Archers Of Loaf were to find their own place in the already huge and still growing world of in­die rock, they had to rely more on subtleties and less on punch — because, want it or not, we gene­rally punch more or less in the same way, whereas our subtleties are all vastly individual.

The subtle side of Eric Bachmann, in particular, led him to exploring the capacities of the drone, the trill, and the jangle. There is a lot of exciting dual guitar playing here, and a lot less boring generic noise than on Icky Mettle. Check out ʽUnderdogs Of Nipomoʼ, where one low-pitched gui­tar begins playing the song like a jerky mid-tempo blues-rocker, then a different, higher-pit­ched, one joins it in a weeping psy­chedelic manner and prevents the song from being «just an­other» alt-rocker. And that happens all over the place on this album.

Additionally, there is a little more emphasis placed on the accessibility of the lyrics — the surre­alism is still there, but the «key phrases», like root notes, are more firmly accentuated to set cer­tain moods for certain songs. Thus, "all of my friends have floated away", sung in a croaking, al­most breaking voice, immediately sets a lament-like sort of mood for ʽFloating Friendsʼ, and even if the rest of the lyrics seem to insist that the phrase be taken literally (because "they clog up the valley and drift up to outer space"), you know that's not really it. It's just a sad song, if not a par­ticularly great one in terms of melody.

In terms of melody, most of the really cool stuff happens early on. ʽStep Into The Lightʼ is a swir­ling kaleidoscope of droning and jangling guitars, much more early Velvet Underground in style than Nirvana or even Pavement. So is ʽHarnessed In Slumsʼ, except it is much faster: if you really let yourself go, the contrast between the masculine and feminine guitars spinning round and round will suck you right inside the circle. Yet it isn't a happy psychedelic merry-go-round — it is a grim circle, maybe more like an inescapable vortex, not overtly pessimistic and suicidal like The Cure, but with a strong whiff of negativity all the same. If it looks like I am babbling, it is simply the result of having to listen to these songs too many times in order to get their appeal.

Words, intonations, notes, overdubs, structures, everything seems to come together here in a ge­ne­ral message that is perhaps best summed up in the next to last song, ʽDeath In The Parkʼ: "It's always the same people / Pissing the same people off". The surrealism and psychedelia with which Bachmann and Johnson are toying around is just a mild attempt to break the circle of de­pressing boredom and routine, predictable happenings of life. The grim guitar drone symbolizes the boredom, and the high whining guitar... the pain? Whatever. Anyway, it is not about the sin­gle ingredients, it's about the whole package — it works, although it also takes quite a bit of time to sink in. But concentrate on understanding that these two guys swirl their guitars like few other couples of guys ever swirled them, and that is the first step towards feeling the coolness of Vee Vee rather than just stating it.

Ironically, the record ends on a completely unpredictable note: after the depression reaches a climax of sorts on the aptly titled ʽThe Worst Has Yes To Comeʼ, the band launches into an al­most carnivalesque «ditty», replete with kiddie-style whistling, simplistic banjo strum, and stupid horns — ʽUnderachievers March And Fight Songʼ, indeed. "Underachievers / Total domination / Kill a billion years / Of total frustration" — hey there hordes of people all over the world, The Archers Of Loaf have written the perfect anthem for you to wake up to every morning, and most of you probably don't even know about it. Oh well, here's one little thumbs up to help with the promotion, even if it's coming about fifteen years too late.

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Archers Of Loaf: Icky Mettle

ARCHERS OF LOAF: ICKY METTLE (1993)

1) Web In Front; 2) Last Word; 3) Wrong; 4) You And Me; 5) Might; 6) Hate Paste; 7) Fat; 8) Plumb Line; 9) Learo, You're A Hole; 10) Sickfile; 11) Toast; 12) Backwash; 13) Slow Worm.

«What makes this sound so compelling is the way it explores the full spectrum of guitar-centric rock, pulling together the blunt and abrasive with the thoughtful in the musical equivalent of a shotgun wedding with the bride and groom doing everything in their power to hold it together while the family is watching in uneasy silence». -- Gregory Heaney, All-Music Guide.

Damn, I wish I could write that way — it takes so much time to realize how entirely devoid of sense this phrase is that no one will probably even bother, leaving the page in a dazed, confu­sed, and, perhaps, even mystified state of mind. On the other hand, I could not say that this band's lyrics — or even the title of their debut album — or even their own name, for that matter — do a good job of surpassing Mr. Heaney in terms of clarity. "All I ever wanted was to be your spine / Lost your friction and you slid for a mile" (ʽWeb In Frontʼ) is a fairly diagnostic couple of lines, and almost each song yields more of the same stuff.

Anyway, Archers Of Loaf stem from Chapel Hill, NC, and, in true indie-rock fashion, consist of 2 guitars, 1 bass, 1 set of drums, and 1 soulful, but rangeless vocal coupled with one of the guitars (Eric Bachmann, no relation to Randy Bachman whatsoever, not to mention the extra n). Since they formed in the year of Nevermind, there is some temptation to pigeonhole them as «grun­gers», which they are not if, by «grunge», we mean the narrow spectrum from Nirvana to Alice In Chains to Pearl Jam and the like. The three differences are in that Archers Of Loaf are:

— nowhere near as heavy: they like low notes and power chords as much as the next guy, but it is clear that Black Sabbath is not a big influence. Sonic Youth, perhaps, but not Sabbath;

— absolutely not «depressed» or «depressing». Most of the music is energetic and angry, but the­re is no suicidal or end-of-the-world-ish ring in Bachmann's voice at all. Only once does he at­tempt to descend into autistic melancholy (ʽYou And Meʼ), but, set against all the other songs, it almost feels like a theatrical gesture for diversity's sake. Spiritual darkness as an essential compo­nent of grunge is completely lacking here;

— simply put, a «post-modern» band: much like Pavement and the Pixies, they inject their tunes with absurdism, irony, and nihilism, although the music is never as experimental as that of Pave­ment, and the band is also affected by a near-complete lack of sense of humor, which makes their post-modernism very, very strange (since we usually sense po-mo the best through the artist's abi­lity to laugh off and ridicule all of the cultural conventions of the past).

All of this puts an individual spin on Icky Mettle, which is a great advantage, considering that the actual songs kinda suck. Well, not «suck», perhaps, but whoever claims that Bachmann and the other guitarist, Eric Johnson, are accomplished riffmeisters must be fairly new to this whole «rock» idea: fifty percent of the time at least, the chord sequences are generic indie fare that you can just as easily encounter on an Avril Lavigne record. The other fifty percent show a little bit more inventiveness: ʽWrongʼ, for instance, opens with a simple, but fresh «scratchy» pattern (for some reason, complemented by an odd «cuckoo» tone from the second guitar — absurdism on the prawl!); ʽLearo, You're A Holeʼ comes replete with a head-splitting overdub of several dro­ning parts that paint the air in aggressively psychedelic colours; and the beginning of ʽToastʼ is like a lo-fi take on the mysterious otherwordliness of The Cure, before the proceedings calm down to give us a nice contrast between a thin, friendly, fun-sounding riff and an all-out scream-fest ("There's something wrong with my toast!" — go figure).

Repeated listens bring out the small details that should, perhaps, be the Archers' major claim to fame. For instance, the main guitar line of ʽWeb In Frontʼ is loud, but totally uninteresting — just a standard «chugga-chugga» recorded for the millionth time. Listen closely and you will notice a thin, almost harp-like, «ethereal» guitar playing a much more complicated role in the adjacent speaker, growing a bit more audacious by the end of the song but still not competitive enough to properly grab your attention until you've listened to this for a second time... and a third one... and a fourth one... by then, the main riff will finally fade away and the nice ringing guitar-harp will be all over your ears. (Stupid question: why not get rid of the main riff altogether?).

ʽPlumb Lineʼ is the slyest of the lot, giving Bachmann enough microphone space to deliver the catch phrase "She's an indie rocker / And nothing's gonna stop her / Her fashion fits" loud and distinct, over a proverbial indie-rock melody if there ever was one — and thus, ensure the band a firm position on college radio and in certain critical minds. But the idea of Icky Mettle is not to glorify indie rock, or propagate teenage rebellion, or even vent one's frustration over failed re­la­tion­ships — there is a little bit of everything, which all melds together in one big fat nothing, and that is the idea of Icky Mettle: to make a modern rock album about nothing. Of course, it would have helped, if, like Seinfeld, these guys at least had a sense of humor to compensate. In its place, they put loudness, brawn, and elements of weirdness, still rather random on this record (but they would grow in numbers by the time they got around to the follow-up).

Today, in knowledgeable circles, Icky Mettle is deemed as sort of a minor classic of the decade. I am not sure if it will hold up as well as the best grunge, indie, and pop-rock records from its era, because the songwriting seems fairly mediocre to me, even if the songs gain a lot through extra touches and flourishes once they are realized on tape. (Same problems as with the Afghan Whigs — another band vastly overrated by connoisseurs and reasonably forgotten by the masses). But there is certainly an enigmatic aura about the album — after all, not every piece of music will prompt the reviewer to describe it with the sort of quotation that I used to preview my own text. Trying it out won't hurt, and, want it or not, these Chapel Hill fellas were an integral part of the indie movement back in the day — gotta know our history.

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