Labels: Future Recordings
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Well. They finally got round to it. An official discography of one of the more well known emo bands of the mid 90’s. I’m not really sure how to approach this review. I certainly was not around when this stuff came out, but for whatever reason, this is my favourite style of hardcore. Were Indian Summer over-rated? I expect they weren’t at the time. Are they now? Quite probably. But what’s that worth anyway? Either you like the band, or you buy the records to put in your record collection and let them gather dust. No-one ever comes and looks at my record collection, I live in the middle of nowhere. So I can’t even do that. I guess I must be buying the records to listen to, or something ridiculous like that.
For anyone new to Indian Summer, this is everything they did on one CD. 9 songs. 35 minutes. Not much is it? And a couple of those tracks are pretty average. Though the live versions are better. Ah, the live versions. Yes, if you are up to the task, seek out the ‘Live: Blue Universe’ CD, which I think is a bit better than this collection. But anyways. Indian Summer played music that was basically like if Slint got over-excited and started crying. Well, there’s a bit more to it than that I guess. It’s all about the quiet, introspective moody parts that build and build and build and then just boil over and spazz out into body shaking grooves. Ooh the emo.
The first 3 tracks have the best recordings, and the little orange insert thing explains why. One thing about Indian Summer is that they never really seem to have any song names, just ones that other people have given them, so we start off with “I Think Your Train Is Leaving”, which meanders a long with repetitious guitar work, and slumbering bass. Almost spoken vocals. Then it gets the build up and hits the groove. This and the track that follows are two of the best songs they put on vinyl. Not sure what the second one was called though! It starts off all jittery and nervy, and basically builds on a pretty simple structure throughout the song, basically just getting noisier and with screamier vocals. Again it hits a pounding groove. The third song is a short one, the insert says it was improvised.
The next 3 songs are from the much sought after s/t 7″, the only one I’ve not yet got. It starts off with their trademark use of Bessie Smith (you should get some of her stuff by the way) vinyl playing. Then the first track I think is called “Aren’t You Angel”. The vocals are weird, and the track is very patchy at times. It’s got some awesome parts like the breakdown into twinkles and softly sung vocals, another I-Summer trademark, then a great build up and finale. The song that follows has a hectic start and it’s really weird hearing this song after only hearing the live version before! Just has a totally different guitar sound to my ears. It’s another short one anyway. But after that comes the piece of resistance. Or whatever the French say. Commonly known as “Angry Son”, this has all the great Indian Summer components in one place. The stunningly beautiful and warm twinkle intro over Bessie Smith, the quiet and barely audible spoken vocals, the false start where it gets noisy for a few moments then tumbles back down into minimalism and the following build up to the downright explosive finale. One of those songs that grips me everytime I hear it. I have to stop what I am doing and just listen. Remarkable. Everything comes together perfectly, the drums, the guitar, the bass, the vocals. It takes over my body! How pretentious I am, but it’s true. I’m sorry. Whatever, I think only September ever came close to making similar music in this style quite as well.
After that we have 3 seperate tracks. The first is I think called “Orchard”, from the Current split 7″. The recording is diabolical, it has this horrible echoey effect and you can barely make out the vocals. You can tell it’s a great song though, just a shame it doesn’t have the sound quality it deserved. After that is “Sugar Pill”. The insert mentions it was recorded for the ‘Ghost Dance’ comp, and at the same time they swapped instruments and recorded a song under the name “From Ashes Of…” for the same comp. Which is a better song actually. Heh. Anyways, they finish up on “Reflections on Milkwede” which was never played live apparently. It’s quite different from their other songs, it has a very moody buildup that suddenly goes off into an erratic finale. Pretty damn awesome, and probably my favourite song of theirs after “Angry Son”.
I guess this might be a limited release. If so it’ll probably be copied onto CDR for peoples friends for quite a few years. Anyways, Indian Summer has been done and dusted for a while now, they probably put this out just to get people such as myself to stop living in the past and just get over it. As the final words on the insert say “the future: free jazz”. Time to move on.