November 18, 1999

Uniaxial

We've all seen them do it. Introspective guitar noodling and teasing rhythms that scream like banshees just as you strain to hear them ...

6 / 10 We've all seen them do it. Introspective guitar noodling and teasing rhythms that scream like banshees just as you strain to hear them. The Mogwai method. Superfine know it well. They know how to leave that pensive frown on your face without necessarily making you unhappy. And 'Uniaxial' - their debut six-song mini-album - is the sound of the Sheffield trio joining the post-rock cognoscenti. Well as apprentice boys at least.

Like Aerial-M and the like, Superfine always allow for you to catch up with their skewed ideas, yet they sometimes display an altogether more urgent mindset. New single 'Cavalier' sounds like Pavement on Red Bull: edgy, endearingly messy and over before it starts. But when they do take those deeper, more defined breaths (the Radiohead hue of 'Circles', 'The Mind Is Elsewhere...') the emerging emotional clarity is realised, even if it doesn't penetrate quite as much as the avant-musings of David Pajo or, say, kindred Stateside spirits Karate.

Still, the more experience Superfine notch up supporting their much-respected peers, the better. That way they can forge something new from this over-beaten sheet of post-rock and, quite possibly, live up to that grandiloquent name.