Canada, 1997, post-rock
This one’s early in their career, before they re-watched the Japanese bousouzoku documentary and realized they’d misplaced the exclamation! mark. My response to this album is heavily influenced by my handmade limited edition vinyl copy, which includes interesting little artworks, a penny flattened by a train on the track, and a locked groove at the end of the album, so that it drones on softly into ∞, never stopping until you pick up the needle. I love that attention to detail. The music? Post-rock cowboys and trains, of course, right down to the dreamy steel guitar. What the West was built on, a waltzing homage to the emptiness of an aging and dead destiny just before the turn of the 21st century. Anyone remember that part where astronaut Dave enters the monolith as it orbits Jupiter? Yeah, this album sounds like that at one point. And then Dave evolves into a mosquito.
Museum Musica 