Deep Voices #30
’90s underground guitar music now
Deep Voices #30 on Apple Music
This week’s playlist is dedicated to emocore/post-hardcore underground guitar bands from the mid to late 1990s. Along with the location-based songs playlist of two weeks ago, I’ll be trying out additional themed Deep Voices playlists. Please let me know if you have any feedback on these themes or have any you’d like to see.
When Sam Jayne died last month, I went back and read an essay I wrote in late 2010 about his old band, Lync. I was trying to capture their ramshackle sound, nominally indie rock but played obtusely. Trying to describe the splintering of the American rock scene after Kurt Cobain’s death, I described singular genres like riot grrrl, hardcore, and emo, before saying that instead of choosing a linear path, “Lync got the coffee grounds at the bottom of the pot.” Their fantastic 1994 album, These Are Not Fall Colors, pilfers a bit from everywhere to make an exuberant and wholly singular statement piece. The guitar sparkles from time to time, a nice break from its chug, while Sam sings with a sweet and sour tone. It’s not recorded especially well, so the fuzz it’s retained gives it the patina of nostalgia, which was probably already true in 1994.
When I wrote about the record, I was 28, already a handful of years older than the band when it was recorded, and I was beginning to wrestle with the definitive end of my youth. “The songs are naïve but don’t know they're naïve,” I said. I meant it as a compliment, but looking back it doesn’t quite come off as one. I think I was jealous of what I perceived as the unselfconscious innocence of the music. What I should have said was that it sounds free.
I was 12 when These Are Not Fall Colors was released, and I didn’t hear Lync or many other artists in the liminal space they occupied until well after they’d broken up. My musical interests, being a particularly angry and sad young guy, were understandably hardcore and emo. Lync and others represented a liminal space in between, one I’ve begun to explore somewhat anew, now in my late 30s. This week’s Deep Voices features an hour of music from 1994-1999 that uses the guitar as a divining rod, searching for a new sound. The music, like Lync’s, isn’t always cohesive. Sometimes that’s a glitch, sometimes a feature.
Maybe it’s my age showing, but it feels hard to imagine this music being made now, a world of garage bands working away in peace, developing a sound outside the spotlight of streaming and social media. Some of these groups were nominally popular at the time, and a few have even received reissue treatments and critical praise. But for every band included on this playlist there were five I looked up on Spotify whose music simply isn’t accessible. That’s understandable—it’s music that was largely analog, released independently decades ago. But I do think the world might be interested to hear the strange majesty of Agna Moraine’s Autobiography or the saccharine guitar of Ettil Vrye. That might be a listen as historical document as much as anything, but it’s history that has largely been ignored. I am surprised that it still sounds quite so good.
Playlist notes:
The guitar playing of Tonie Joy is likely the apex of the sound I’ve described above. The Baltimore musician with a piercing tone has luckily been extremely prolific, and all his bands are worth exploring. I’ve included two here, Universal Order of Armageddon (whose footnoted place in history largely comes from the fact that their drummer, Brooks Headley, later became a noted pastry chef) and The Great Unraveling. The two bands are largely similar, with seething tones and explosive sonics. Neither group is explicitly a hardcore band, though the power they yield is often more sinister than the blunt edges of groups with more straightforward aggression. Joy’s guitar often weaves a crooked path, like he’s playing a riff to avoid something, not to get somewhere. Two weeks ago, I included the song “Guatemala” by Moss Icon, likely his most foundational group. They’re probably the easiest to swallow, too, with their vocalist Jonathan Vance’s shamanlike rambles. But I like Joy as a frontman in The Great Unraveling, less contemplative and more straight up over it. It’s good music for anger, sure, but it’s even better for confusion.
Unwound was too gruff to ever have a shot at the mainstream. But in their later career they borrowed a note from Sonic Youth and put an occasional sheen of beauty on the distortion. Their final album, Leaves Turn Inside You is their epic, and likely their best, their formula of knotty rhythms slowed down, giving them a nervous sensuality. But “Lady Elect” from their 1996 album Repetition may be their prettiest song. It builds to a heavy jam that breaks suddenly around the four minute mark, with something that might be described as a guitar solo. I say that because that phrase usually conjures ZZ Top noodles. But the pace is unhurried and so it’s bluesy and sweet. It’s like relief instead of triumph.
But what I really wanted to note about Unwound is that their incredible drummer Sarah Lund offers drum lessons, including via Zoom during the pandemic.
Piebald is likely the band on this playlist that could most easily be accused of being nakedly emo. They had a long career and the album “New Coke” comes from, 1997’s When Life Hands You Lemons, catches them in a transitional period between hardcore and a more pop-punk/alternative sound. The vocals are certainly nasal in a traditional emo mold, but the music is more robust, creating a weird tension. To be honest, I adored this album when I was in high school, but I do think it’s earned its inclusion here. “Sometimes there are dragons in my head/Put on your black dress again and we’ll go dance again,” are the song’s first lines, a mix of Anne Sexton and Dashboard Confessional. About midway through, there is a buildup that, in a hardcore band, could lead to a macho moment of catharsis. Instead, Piebald has a deep moment of longing, as evinced by the backup vocals. “When I touch your hand, mine all mine all mine,” they sing. “Feels like summer. Mine all mine all mine!” It would be embarrassing if it wasn’t so earnest. Or, okay, it might be embarrassing.