5 out of 5

Label: Southern Records

Produced by: Greg Norman

Lordy, how much I love this record, and lordy, how much I wanted to hate it.

I mean, I saw these guys open up for – I think, if my when-I-went-outside memory hasn’t failed me completely – The Faint, for crap-shitting sake (The Faint represent the Saddle Creek world of indie, to me, which still falls into teeth-gritting hipster territory), and there’s that goddamned parenthesed title, and the cool chill dudes on the cover (teeth grit!), and the off-key singing and plodding beat that’s, like, 100% pure Chicago post-rock bythaeffin’ book.

Also: when 90 Day Men later went all prog psych weird, I loved those records too, and I still love this non-prog psych one, and I love the followup transitional album…

So wha’ever the magical stew be that this group brew, apparently I’m buying and chowing down.  And this album is a glorious mess of ill-timed, out-of-tune guitar and garble-mouthed singing (with wondrous shouty moments) that slip-slides into pitter-patter jazz later on; opener Dialed In is, like, the opposite, playing out a bass and drum beat for what should be too long before Brian Case – singing like he’s forgotten he’s alive – sidles in to croon, but then the fantastically rocking Missouri Kids Cuss (guys, I’m FROM Missouri, and I cuss!) lays down the law, and you’re like – alright, here’s where 90 Day Men let loose.

Only not.

A track down the road, Super Illuminary hangs around in instrumental territory for ten minutes – no peaks, just shimmering around; pulsing with mood (what mood?  Man, swagger) and then we get into the contemplative jazz, and the excellently named Sort Of Is A Country In Love drops some French vocals, cuz let’s go for broke.

Greg Norman gives this all a living room vibe, and you’d hate these guys except all of this sounds so organic and natural in their hands; when you do get to those later 90 Day Men masterpieces of weird, you retroactively understand that there was precision to this slop, and that’s why it worked so freaking well.  If it was just smarty smarts replaying their Pavement and Big Black records, they’d’ve dropped their major label album by now and you’d forget about their Sub Pop Spin-hyped debut; instead (It (Is) It) Critical Band was just a first stab at defining a truly unique post-rock thing, and that it has stood up to nigh-20 years of indie wankery in its wake, still sounding fresh and weird and harsh and laid back and cool…

Lordy.