November 14, 1998
White Trash Heroes
In North Carolina, USA - bastion of collegiate slackerdom and redneck intransigence - change occurs slowly....
7 / 10
IN NORTH CAROLINA, USA - BASTION of collegiate slackerdom and redneck intransigence - change occurs slowly. Five albums into their resolutely lo-fi career, Chapel Hill's Archers Of Loaf continue to push into the unexplored nooks of alt-rock, though this time the result is less wilfully esoteric, more artfully sophisticated.
'Slick Tricks And Bright Lights' glides prettily like Mercury Rev asleep at the wheel; 'One Slight Wrong Move' is menacingly electronic; 'After The Last Laugh' swells with children's voices like a hymn. And in the title track - a dark, hypnotic drive through an industrial fringe into suburban trailer parks, "dreaming of television, turned up too loud" - the Archers' muse finds its most compelling expression.
Throughout, the sentiment is one of wanting to preserve a bucolic ideal in the face of encroaching gentrification. Eric Bachman's vocals rasp like rusty nails in a rain bucket, his lyrics pinpointing the tacky urbanisation of small-town America as a malignant, tarted-up evil.
'White Trash Heroes' is a wry statement of protest against the corruptive forces of time. Even so, the Archers' own heavy limbs have begun to stir with slow evolution.
8
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