November 20, 2000

London Highbury Upstairs At The Garage

For anti-macho, cottage industry rock, handheld camerawork, aggressive-drone-thing-side-project kinda guys...

If the centre ground of American rock is sports metal and the fringes are populated by armchair rockers, then San Diego's Pinback are all about second hand furniture pride. A taste for the wilfully threadbare runs through last year's 'This Is A Pinback CD', making it hard to imagine how they pull off their thrumming indie laments live.

Stubbornly woolly hatted in a hot venue, vocalist Rob Crow strains his falsetto while his co-writer, the beardsome baritone Zach Burwell declaims stream-of-consciousness pearls. It's one of the main attractions of the studio-bound Pinback, the impressionistic interplay of the two singer-guitarists, so as they pump up their vocal chords for raucous venues there's an inevitable loss of nuance.

Away from the vocal mic, however, they're more robust than fey song titles like 'Byzantine' and 'Rousseau' suggest. The fatalistic singalong of 'Tripoli' is indestructible and affecting, and new song 'Some Voices' has skittering, spectral charm, as if Elliott Smith had decided to cover a Tom Waits song as hip-hop lite.

Within the Lou 'Sebadoh' Barlow appreciation society element, much approving moshing is sparked off by Pinback's sepia funkification of their rainy day beatscapes. They swap instruments manfully. Rob brings out his accordion for a bout of creaking organ'n'self-deprecation.

For anti-macho, cottage industry rock, handheld camerawork, aggressive-drone-thing-side-project kinda guys, they put over their intimate insights with surprising primal vigour. The Pinback may not have six packs, but hey, they can emote poetically and sweat at the same time.

Roger Morton