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Reviews: Pinback's Information Retrieved Part A

Pinback's Information Retrieved Part A

Pinback’s been awfully quiet of late. With only a 2008 tour EP (Ascii) and an appearance on Yo Gabba Gabba since their 2007 full-length Autumn of the Seraphs, the group has been put on the backburner for its primary members. Armistead Burwell Smith IV (or Zach Smith, for brevity’s sake) polished off an excellent solo debut in 2009, Systems Officer’s Underslept, a natural extension of Pinback’s intricately layered pop. He also returned to his pre-Pinback outfit, Three Mile Pilot, for their 2010 reunion album The Inevitable Past Is the Forgotten Future. I recently ran through Rob Crow’s labyrinthine discography in a write-up of Heavy Vegetable’s two full-lengths, but he’s been less frenzied of late, offering the 2008 sophomore release from his metal band Goblin Cock (Come with Me If You Want to Live) and an internet radio show. But their primary outlet is slowly waking up, starting with this Record Store Day single.

Information Retrieved, Part A is Pinback’s first release with Temporary Residence Limited since signing with the label in 2009 after the demise of Touch & Go. If you’re worried that time or the label switch has altered the group’s DNA, fear not: “Sherman” and “Thee Srum Proggitt” are immediately recognizable as Pinback concoctions. Crow and Smith trade off verses on “Sherman,” then cascade over each other on the chorus. Tightly snapping rhythms, back-masked guitar, and vocal-mimicking keyboards lay the instrumental foundations, but the song’s success comes from those exquisite vocal arrangements. “Thee Srum Proggitt” is a languid Crow-fronted song loaded with Dark Star samples (the John Carpenter film which provided the group its name), but Smith pops in for a few lines. I’ll likely stick to the a-side for future spins.

It’s unclear whether these songs will appear on the full-length Information Retrieved, which has now been pushed back to 2012. I chose to willfully ignore that possibility and grab this nicely packaged single, which comes in a sealed paper bag, offers a nice picture sleeve inside, and may be on colored vinyl (I got marbled blue). If your local store sold out, Pinback’s on tour through the middle of May (although I'm just guessing that they'll have copies with them) and Temporary Residence Limited will put a small amount of singles up for sale on May 1st.

The Haul 2010: Heavy Vegetable's Frisbie + The Amazing Undersea Adventures of Aqua Kitty and Friends

Heavy Vegetable – Frisbie + The Amazing Undersea Adventures of Aqua Kitty and Friends LP – Headhunter, 1995 – $14

Heavy Vegetable's Frisbie + The Amazing Undersea Adventures of Aqua Kitty and Friends

Like many listeners, I came to Pinback without any knowledge of Rob Crow and Armistead Burwell Smith IV’s prior bands. Pinback, to their credit, doesn’t require any prerequisites for understanding or enjoying their intricately melodic indie rock, but nevertheless, Crow and Smith provide an awful lot of material for the Related If You Like column of a music review. Smith’s side is easier to collate: he’s a past and current member of San Diego indie rockers Three Mile Pilot (who now share space on Temporary Residence Limited with Pinback and have a new album out now) and strikes out on his own as Systems Officer, whose Underslept made my top 20 of 2009. Rob Crow’s catalog, however, is a bit harder to summarize.

Solo albums? Three of them. Stints in the instrumental Physics, the heavy metal Goblin Cock (as Lord Phallus), the optigon-pop Optigonally Yours, the ADHD indie rockers the Ladies? Check! Background vocals on Drive Like Jehu’s “Luau” from the classic Yank Crime? Naturally. Lead vocals on four songs from Deftones’ singer Chino Moreno’s 2005 Team Sleep album? Why yes, who else should join Mary Timony on that endeavor? There are certainly other stray examples of Crow’s prolific nature, but the branch I’m most interested in started with Heavy Vegetable. Yes, an entire branch.

Heavy Vegetable started out as contemporaries of the just-name-dropped Drive Like Jehu in the early 1990s San Diego scene, offering a unique combination of power-pop enthusiasm, math-rock time changes, and tidy hardcore song lengths set to conversational, day-to-day lyrics. A sugar-coated Minutemen, if you will. They even had a song called “Slint” on their 1993 A Bunch of Stuff EP7, which tidied that group’s post-rock dynamics into a tight two-and-a-half minutes. Following the release of The Amazing Undersea Adventures of Aqua Kitty and Friends in 1994 and Frisbie in 1995, Heavy Vegetable split up, collecting their odds and ends on the 2000 compilation Mondo Aqua Kitty. Rob Crow and singer Eléa Tenuta reconvened with a new rhythm section as Thingy, releasing the Staring Contest EP in 1996, Songs About Angels, Evil, and Running Around on Fire in 1996, and the downright excellent To the Innocent in 2000. They’ve since split up, but Crow is rumored to be finishing up a final Thingy studio album any day now. Never one to miss an opportunity, Crow formed the Other Men with the two members of Heavy Vegetable not involved in Thingy, drummer Manolo Turner and guitarist Travis Nelson, and released Wake Up Swimming in 2007. As of June 2010, that’s the extent of the Heavy Vegetable branch, but Crow’s feverish release schedule will surely date this round-up within a few months.

I can heartily recommend two starting points for Rob Crow’s seemingly endless discography beyond Pinback. First, I’ll suggest the one I semi-randomly chose back in the day: Thingy’s To the Innocent. It’s an involving mix of tight, energetic rock and delicate acoustic ballads about topics as varied as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Rob Crow’s cat, and not having any money. The carefully arranged vocal trade-offs between Crow and Tenuta should appeal to Pinback fans. Plus, unlike the Heavy Vegetable and Thingy albums released on Headhunter, it’s still in print, so the band might see a few bucks from the purchase.

If you’re willing to hit up eBay or scour LP bins (or live on the west coast, where this album is apparently still available), you can’t go wrong with this 2LP set of Heavy Vegetable’s two full-lengths. With 45 total songs spread across four (infuriatingly mislabeled) sides of lime green vinyl, winning songs fly by you at a breakneck pace. True to form, there are Star Wars drawings denoting specific song authorship and lyrics about Jackie Chan, food, and video games. The Amazing Undersea Adventures of Aqua Kitty and Friends is more aggressive and rough around the edges than Thingy, but Frisbie balances this abandon with quieting doses of acoustic guitar. It’ll take a few spins before the best songs sift their way out of this onslaught, but much like the similarly sprawling Double Nickels on the Dime, you’re likely to find a new favorite with each listen.