Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Unrest - Imperial f.f.r.r.

Hannah!

I've never known you to be of suspect taste, so I suspect you'll like this album. Like every third indie pop album produced between 1985 and 2005, it starts with a high-pitched drone intended to alienate the normies. Joke's on them, though, because even the normiest person could dig on a track like 'Suki' which is shimmering stuttering pop greatness. In my opinion the best tracks on the album are of this vein (see also: 'Cherry Come On').

You can divide 90s indie pop into two camps in a somewhat-not-arbitrary way: guitar heroics type stuff (Dinosaur Jr. being the progenitors, Built to Spill being the great bearers of the legacy) and I-don't-give-a-fuck-about-musical-ability twee and twee-like music. Imperial f.f.r.r. samples the gamut of the latter camp, from the aforementioned jangly songs, to the proto-emo of 'Isabell', to the droney druggy but still upbeat 'June'.