| Pinback - Autumn of the Seraphs |
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| Written by Rob van Alstyne | |
| Monday, September 17, 2007 at 04:58 PM | |
 PinbackAutumn of the Seraphs www.pinback.com www.myspace.com/pinback It’s always interesting to hear how a band reacts to their first brush with semi-stardom; particularly when the time comes for the group to record a follow-up to the album that brought them out of the shadows. That’s why it was with bated breath that I put on the latest from San Diego indie-pop veterans Pinback. Sure, Autumn of the Seraphs is the group’s fourth album and sole constant members/multi-instrumentalists Rob Crow and Zach Smith started working together nearly a decade ago, but Autumn is their first record in nearly three years. More importantly, it represents the first recorded peep from the dynamic duo since prominent placement on the then sizzling-hot FOX televisions series The O.C. helped lift the band from a small cult following (clubs with crowd capacity numbers in the low hundreds) to a slightly larger cult following (clubs with crowd capacity in the low thousands) circa 2004. After getting a taste of mainstream attention with the superbly trippy Summer in Abaddon, Pinback return on Seraphs with a set of 11 fighting lean tunes that if anything is scrappier and less immediately palatable than its predecessor. Clearly showing the effects of their mammoth touring efforts behind Abaddon, the typically overdub happy pair has never sounded more like a traditional live rock band than on this album. This is probably a direct result of the band’s move towards more prominent use of human drummers as opposed to programmed percussion (No Knife drummer Chris Prescott turns up on 7 tracks). Talk of rock ‘n’ roll conventions aside, however, Autumn of the Seraphs will still surely sound strange for those uninitiated in Pinback’s symbiotic and insidiously infectious melodic ways. As on all prior releases, Smith and Crow's vocals overlap constantly, often resulting in dueling choruses featuring entirely different melodies and lyrics, each one vying for the listener’s attention. It’s an atypical take on pop song structure, and one that at this point the Pinback boys have refined exquisitely, particularly on the frantic album opener “From Nothing to Nowhere.” Another Pinback staple, the prominent placement of electric and acoustic pianos that foregrounded Abbadon, is largely absent here, with the band preferring instead to explore the textural possibilities offered by Smiths’ lithe bass work and Crow’s smooth crystalline electric guitar figures. Fortunately, a smaller instrumental palette hasn’t come at the expense of tonal variety. Pinback leave themselves enough wiggle room on the album for at least one of their stoned pseudo-reggae nuggets (“Good to Sea”) and more ambient electro-pop explorations (“How We Breathe”) while simultaneously cranking out the most directly rocking tunes of their career. The loudly thudded kick drum and nasty classic rock riffage that kick off album closer “Off By 50” are about as close to a bar band as these sonically sophisticated boys have ever sounded. It’s a testament to Pinback’s craftsmanship throughout Autumn of the Seraphs that the band is just as convincing when exploring no-frills rock as they are reshaping their rich past of layered psych-pop. "From Nothing to Nowhere" from Autumn of the Seraphs COMING UP: Pinback with opening act Frightened Rabbit on Wednesday, October 17, at the Fine Line Music Café . 8 p.m. 18+. $13 adv/$15 door. |
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| Last Updated: Monday, September 17, 2007 at 05:15 PM |
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