Archers of Loaf were my favorite band of the 90s

Archers of Loaf were my favorite band of the 90s.

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pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15688-icky-mettle/
youtube.com/watch?v=4ZkEob55qso&list=PLhSDY6742WkP1-SHx4KFTwqPlAUOf7zmW
consequenceofsound.net/2012/02/album-review-archers-of-loaf-vee-vee-reissue/
pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16333-vee-vee/
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youtube.com/watch?v=tCG0TiE9_Aw
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>Archers of Loaf: Icky Mettle (Alias, 1993) Guitars screeching every which way, beats speeding and hesitating and slamming chaos back into the box, twentysomething boyvoices whining and arguing and drawling and straining, it's the world according to indie rock: a tantrum set to music as sharp and self-contained as a comedy routine. Aurally, this is now--one now, anyway. If it has zero to say about tomorrow, why don't you just worry about that then? A

pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15688-icky-mettle/ 9.0

youtube.com/watch?v=4ZkEob55qso&list=PLhSDY6742WkP1-SHx4KFTwqPlAUOf7zmW

>Archers of Loaf: Vee Vee (Alias, 1995) Eric Bachmann's pissed-off, speechlike yowl-to-croak isn't as callow or pop as Stephen Malkmus's demented, speechlike croon-to-whine, but their bands share an aural gestalt: tuneful two-guitar breaks that set off unkempt explosions before recombining in brief climaxes soon interrupted by more disarray. The Archers trace the agitated melodies and off guitar to the Replacements, as if the clamor Bob Stinson unloosed by accident and spirit possession was instead planned out by former sax major Bachmann and axe-wielding bad boy Eric Johnson. With Paul Westerberg an adept of the realistic popsong and the Archers' titles so gnomic they forget them themselves, I resisted this notion until the show where I caught myself shouting out a whole utterly comprehensible stanza: "They caught and drowned the front man/Of the world's worst rock and roll band/He was out of luck/Because nobody gave a fuck/The jury gathered all around the aqueduct/Drinking and laughing and lighting up/Reminiscing just how bad he sucked/Singin' throw him in the river/Throw him in the river/Throw him in the river/Throw the bastard in the river." A

consequenceofsound.net/2012/02/album-review-archers-of-loaf-vee-vee-reissue/ A

pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16333-vee-vee/ 8.4

youtube.com/watch?v=2FqBHok9gCk&list=PLhSDY6742WkNGoVmHSBIbawz-cefPElI7

The punk version of Mac Demarco.

>band sounds like 90s version of the Ramones
>Christgau beats off to them
Shock.

I never understood why he always craps on any rock that has riffs or an actual melody to it.

youtube.com/watch?v=0trNNJQ3N9Q

This would probably be ok in the pit at Riot Fest but I don't want to sit and listen to it on iTunes.

They have ballads too.

And sonically they're more interesting than the Ramones. Off key, off tempo jangle rock.

youtube.com/watch?v=vI1a9x5cwHc

youtube.com/watch?v=UvrGUaK6NcE

Sleater-Kinney. Goddamn was he obsessed with them.

This is a later Archers track and its seriously within the top 50 melodies I've ever heard. The lyrics aren't that great though.

youtube.com/watch?v=JUa9S6qJS5A

Archers of Loaf: All the Nations Airports (Alias, 1996) What verbal content you can parse might be sardonic if it carried any emotional weight at all--conned customers, security from LAX to JFK, assassination on Christmas eve. Yet it's too hoarse and wild to seem detached or even deadpan; basically what it gives off is intelligence, as a given you live with rather than a goal you achieve. The import's in croaked, wild, intelligent music that's also virtuosic, especially up against the myriad alt bands who fancy themselves players these days. The controlled discord of the four instrumentals recalls the compositional smarts of Eric Bachmann's sax-based Barry Black, but the nasty little guitar lines have Eric Johnson all over them, and bass and drums put in their two bits as well. True, their WEA debut could be more songful. But don't blame them for making the most of the cognitive dissonance that is their lot. A-

Archers of Loaf: White Trash Heroes (Alias, 1998) Hey, we all have our personal alt-rock standbys--campaigners who've stuck out a sound that rings our chimes dead center. So if I tell you mine are the Voidoids revisited, will I maybe make a sale? Two guitars, one choppy and one fleet, rip up bebop-worthy dissonances over punk forcebeats, and if the frontman seems less than charismatic, well, Richard Hell types never hold their bands together for six years. Seeker that he is, Eric Bachmann varies croak with tweetle, massages some keybs, even samples. Minor details, I insist. This is their sound, there is none higher, other indie bands should just retire. A-

He does overpraise Sleater-Kinney for sure, Dig Me Out is a classic though. I rate the others 5 - 8s out of 10.

Ah, he just liked them because he thought they were cute.

I notice that Christgau really didn't like any of the big alt rock bands like Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains and bombed most of their albums.

Why would anyone like them? They were just stadium buttmetal posing as alternative rock.

Christgau got bullied in high school by guys who liked rock 'n roll, no wonder he'd hate anything with proper hooks.

I'll give you Pearl Jam, but Dirt is a fucking classic album.

I disagree with Christgau on a billion things but he had good taste in simplistic rock music. A ton of the 90s indie rock he praised is good.

But Christgau loves rock 'n roll. Well, he loves danceable three chord rock 'n roll. He hates hard rock/heavy metal.

Agreed, Dirt is excellent. Actually kept me more straight-edge-ish than Fugazi did.

yeah he feels sexually threatened by guys like Gene Simmons and Nikki Sixx

Dirt [Columbia, 1992]

A heroin album, take it or leave it--"Junkhead" certainly isn't "ironic" and probably isn't "fictional" either. Crunch crunch crunch, riff riff riff--way harder, louder, and more metallic than Soundgarden ever will be. But the price of this power is that it's also uglier and stupider--the sound of hopeless craving. Sitting here with my "books and degrees" (well, degree), I very much doubt that if I "opened my mind," as resident sickman Layne Staley suggests, I'd be "doing" like him (er, the narrator of the song). I'll wait for my own man, thank you. B

Jar of Flies [Columbia, 1994] :(

Like, even Kurt Cobain said those bands were phonies--bunch of hair metal dudes who decided to jump on the alternative bandwagon.

They do have proper hooks.

youtube.com/watch?v=tCG0TiE9_Aw

Seeing Carrie Brownstein's smile in person back then was a def treat.

Ironically, both of those guys were awkward nerds in high school who started a band so they could get laid.

To be fair, every music critic hates Gene Simmons and Nikki Sixx. Gene made average bluesy hard rock and then blindly hopped from trend to trend to stay relevant and Nikki made metal that was extremely overproduced and schlocky.

Kiss after the 70s jumped trends like crazy but Motley Crue jumped trends from day one. They went from a NWOBM sound on the first two albums to sounding like Bon Jovi on albums 3-5 and then alternative rock in the 90s.

Also Nikki Sixx was always a little emo fruitcake who wanted to do songs like Starry Eyes. SATD is their heaviest album and lacks any of his pop rock nonsense probably because of record label insistence. Then on TOP they go right back to those kinds of songs.

I've never really paid any attention to Motley Crue so I didn't know they were as blatantly money hungry as Kiss. Are their "alternative rock" albums as terrible as I think they are?

The S/T isn't terrible although it sold about 10 copies. They had a new frontman (John Corabi) and the lyrics had a lot more maturity to them. Then they resurrected the bloated carcass of Vince Neil on Generation Swine, which is a joke and you should never listen to.

Superstar Car Wash [Metal Blade, 1993] :(

A Boy Named Goo [Metal Blade, 1995] :(

Dizzy Up The Girl [Warner Bros., 1998] *bomb*

How did this thread about the greatest slacker indierock band turn into a dad's favorite heavy metal/pop metal/hair metal fuckfest?

Mostly to combat all of the Christgau muh punk muh indie dickriders.

This Archers song is the best Erik Satie ripoff I've heard. Even better than the Aphex Twin ones. youtube.com/watch?v=fv7jFmwfcdA

At least he has the taste to know that Archers and Sleater-Kinney are better than Kiss And Motley Crue.

Archers were great. Polvo and Superchunk, their North Carolina brethren were awesome too.

What's weird is he also has an affinity for Nirvana, giving both In Utero and Nevermind an A rating which was strange to me.

Wat? Kurt was a hipster punk/experimental snob too.

i.4cdn.org/mu/1475541035394.jpg

Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, AIC, were all classic rock/heavy metal guys. Kurt made fun of them back then.

Do you think Kurt would've ever made a song as shit as the Temple Of The Dog single?

youtube.com/watch?v=VUb450Alpps

Dave Groll was the only one who liked classic rock/heavy metal in Nirvana.

He did like Aerosmith though.

>Dave Groll was the only one who liked classic rock/heavy metal in Nirvana.

Cobain was actually pretty into metal, into everything from typical mainstream fare like Metallica and Ozzy Osbourne to (at the time) more low profile shit like Celtic Frost.
He was just very, very self-conscious about shitting on metal in the press because he wanted to pander to the "progressive" music scene he was a part of which shrugged off all metal as patriarchal macho bullshit.
Cobain lied about a lot of things.

>implying Strutter isn't fun as fuck

He's given two Gogol Bordello albums an A+. TWO!!!!

Yeah everyone knows he was in the front row at Live in Seattle 89.

He liked metal, he didn't like cockrock like Van Halen. That was really what he ridiculed.

They all have great songs. Archers and Sleater have better albums as a whole.

"There's two kinds of bands. One is a group like the Pixies who have something to say in their music and the other are the dumb, loud, let's party until the world ends kind like Van Halen."

Ok, that's kind of gross. That's why I added the PF and CoS recs under his reviews as well, to nullify his sometimes shit taste by having other reviewers held in some esteem agree that the Archers were great.

Queen II [Elektra, 1974]

Wimpoid heavoid royaloid android no void. C+

The News of the World [Elektra, 1977]

In which the group who last winter bought you a $7.95 LP to boycott devotes one side to the wantonness of women and the other to the doomed to life futile rebelliousness of the poor saps (those saps!) (you saps!) who buy and listen. C-

Jazz [Elektra, 1978]

This isn't completely disgusting--Ry Cooder come back, all is forgiven--and "I Wanna Ride My Bicycle" is even kind of cute. Worth 10ccs--now stick a spoke or a pump in their asses. C+

Dressed To Kill [Casablanca, 1975]

I feel schizy about this record. It rocks with a brutal, uncompromising force that's very impressive--sort of a slicked-down, tightened-up, heavied-out MC5--and the songwriting is much improved from albums one and two. But the lyrics recall the liberal fantasy of rock concert as Nuremberg rally, equating sex with victimization in a display of male supremacism that glints with humor only at its cruelest--song titles like "Room Service" and "Ladies in Waiting." In this context, the band's refusal to bare the faces that lie beneath the clown makeup becomes ominous, which may be just what they intend, though for the worst of reasons. You know damn well that if they didn't have both eyes on maximum commerciality they'd call themselves Blow Job. B

Yeah he was kind of a douche, he was right about the Archers though.

This Was [Atlantic, 1969]

Ringmaster Ian Anderson has come up with a unique concept that combines the worst of Arthur Brown, Roland Kirk, and your local G.O. blues band. I find his success very depressing indeed. C-

Stand Up [Atlantic, 1969]

Fans of the group think it's a great album. I am not a fan of the group. I think it is an adequate album. B-

E Pluribus Funk [Capitol, 1971]

The usual competent loud rock with the usual paucity of drive and detail. I admit, I find myself genuinely touched by "People, Let's Stop The War". But it doesn't tell me anything I don't already know. C+

>Archers of Loaf were my favorite band of the 90s.

im sorry

Who Are You [MCA, 1978]

Every time I listen, I pick up some new detail in Roger's singing or Pete's guitar or John's bass. Not Keith's drumming though, and I still don't relate to the synthesizer. But I never learn anything new and this is not my idea of fun rock and roll. It should be one or the other, if not both. B

Nevermind [Geffen, 1991]

After years of hair-flailing sludge that achieved occasional songform on singles no normal person ever heard, Seattle finally produces some proper postpunk, aptly described by resident genius Kurt Cobain: "Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, bad solo." This is hard rock as the term was understood before metal moved in--the kind of loud, slovenly, tuneful music you think no one will ever work a change on again until the next time it happens, whereupon you wonder why there isn't loads more. It seems so simple. A

Christgau mostly liked the song selection on Dazed and Confused because it was 3 chord hard rock kinds of stuff that went light on Black Sabbath kinds of songs.

Pavement was the best band of the 90s don't even front nigga

Guided by Voices > Pavement >>>>>>>>>> the rest

The low-first beatles and the pop pixies were not the best 90s band! Go loaf!

He was a jazzfag and switched to rock when rock became more popular.

GBV>AoL>shit>Pavement>piss>else

this

none of them are close to GBV

If they released Icky Mettle or Vee Vee in 1978, They would today be considered in the top 10 punk albums of all time.