90 Day Men
We Blame Chicago
Spectrum Culture 80点相当
Pitchfork 点相当
すごく良い。
知らなかった。
3枚のスタジオ・アルバム、
未発表の2001年のセッション、EP、single、out take
のBOX
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/90-day-men-we-blame-chicago/
Career retrospectives tend to coincide with a period in which their subjects have become newly influential or relevant, or a moment when shifting tastes have made them ripe for rediscovery. That’s not the case with 90 Day Men, the Chicago art rockers whose three albums drew from turn-of-the-century underground rock’s most obscure corners, and sound even more arcane two decades later. Nothing in the air suggests the time is right for a 90 Day Men reappraisal; you’d be hard pressed to find a contemporary band that cites them as an inspiration. Perhaps the best argument for Numero Group releasing a career box set now is that there might never be a right time.
Numero’s 5xLP set We Blame Chicago compiles all the group’s studio albums, along with singles, EPs, and unreleased material, chronicling 90 Day Men’s evolution from a math-rock band straining for originality into a jazzier, more cryptic outfit that eventually found it. For all its promise, their 2000 debut album (Is (It) Is) Critical Band couldn’t quite crack the puzzle of finding coherent common ground between math rock, modernist post-hardcore, and jagged post-punk. The band’s most avant hallmarks were there from the beginning—long, digressive songs; whiplash turns; almost free-form instrumental interplay—but the presentation was off. An air of artifice hangs over the record, especially the performances of singer Brian Case, who sang mostly in either a hectoring torrent of exclamations (“This is from one primadonna to another!”) or in droll spoken monologues.
Even by the standards of music that never cared much about likability, he could be a gratingly confrontational frontman, either so overbearing he was barely tolerable or so checked out he was barely there. It didn’t help, either, that the album’s central pairing of sardonic post-punk a la Gang of Four and the Fall and stern, serious Louisville-style math rock clashed on a conceptual level. Even on a song that grappled with the dichotomies of seeking and knowing, faith and uncertainty, “Exploration vs. Solution, Baby,” the glibness is right there in the title, like a shrug emoji saying, “Take this seriously, or don’t.” You’d imagine Slint’s Spiderland would lose something, too, if that album broke its unflinching intensity every couple of minutes to tell you it was just pulling your leg.
ミズーリ州セントルイス出身のバンド
のち
シカゴのアート ロッカー
(It (Is) It) Critical Band （2000）
Panda Park (2004)
