Unwound Listening Club

Alright, after the relative success of me self-indulgently choosing an underrated classic as my pick for the How Good Is It Really 50th edition, there seems to be a decent amount of interest in the idea of hosting a listening club to explore the back catalogue and find out how we got from the band’s relatively humble beginnings as a post-riot grrrl/grunge Pacific Northwest post-hardcore band to the post-rock visionaries they’d end up becoming.

Hopefully, I can give a decent listening guide as we go through, and maybe, just as maybe, you’ll uncover enough here to get as obsessed with them as I am. I’ll be using the Mogwai equivalent as a guide to expect song and albums polls along the way, as well as some bonus bits and pieces if we so desire.

So as the vote unanimously agreed to do this in release order we begin with the band’s first released full length on Kill Rock Stars, Fake Train (1993). Confusingly this means later on we will cover some stuff that was written and released before this later on in the series, but we’ll cross those bridges when we come to them.

In some ways, it is fitting that we start with this, as it was the first material recorded with drummer Sara Lund, whose angular style would go on to define the band’s sound. As we’ll find out when we cover the actual debut, Lund’s work behind the skins would pretty much immediately elevate Unwound from "just another young snotty grunge band in early 90s PNW America, to a band willing to carve their own niche in the post-Nirvana world that was rapidly approaching (note: this album was released 2 months before In Utero). That’s Tom Jones on the cover by the way, not Henry Winkler as I always assumed.

Youtube playlist:

Spotify:

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i’ve only listened to New Plastic Ideas and a 2001 live album of them playing early stuff, and as of today the last album. may try to remember to listen to some of these.

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this is the previous release to NPI, grouped together in the reissues as Rat Conspiracy. If you enjoy NPI, there’s a good chance you’ll like this one too.

Band I’ve been meaning to get into for various reasons. May give this a go!

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Only vaguely knew the name and assumed they sounded like something else. Your description in the OP sounds appealing to me, so I’ll aim to join to this listening club as and when I can.

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A band I really like but got into after they’d finished recording so know nothing about (I mean I could have found out about them at any point so that’s just laziness really).

So will try my best to be up for this - definitely be interesting to hear everyone’s takes and to listen chronologically.

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For me, whilst Fake Train is pretty great, NPI improves on it in every way.

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Another vote for ‘Band I’ve been interested in giving a go for a while but never actually got around to sticking on any of their albums’. So yeah might join in with this although I have been pretty rubbish at posting on here recently :sweat_smile:

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Gonna listen to this going to the shops and report back so I’ve got it fresh in mind

Just listened to Fake Train. I feel like this is definitely an album I wish I’d had access to as a teenager - just getting into Slint and Sonic Youth and Modest Mouse, and desperate to hear more bands with those dynamics and that raw but evocative style of production. Admittedly said production definitely leans more towards the raw side generally speaking, but it does a lot of what I really like about this kind of music. And I’m aware, from what little else I’ve heard of their other releases, that they broaden out atmospherically a looooott later on too.

‘Were, Are and Was, or Is’ pretty much encapsulates what I love about this side of post-hardcore / emo adjacent kinda stuff — a spidery bassline, and growing swathes of noise offsetting a gentler melancholy.

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Going to give this a go. Always assumed they were industrial or something, but the description in the OP sounds like I was completely wrong.

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Had chance to listen to Fake Train today and I do absolutely love it. As a band they really hit a sweet spot for me. Tbh I really don’t listen to much music of this type - that is just to mean in the broadest sense as in guitars and vocals. Sure I have my bands I like but it’s pretty rare that that format doesn’t just end up boring me after a couple of songs in a row even if all the individual songs are good.

Also I don’t know what scene or sub-genre they are considered to be a part of but I suspect a lot of the bands they tend to get grouped with or compared to I either dislike or simply have no interest in. I’ve seen them compared to Fugazi and that’s a good example of a band I had a couple of albums by and wanted to like but never properly connected with and when I went back to them not long ago just left me cold. Modest Mouse are another band being mentioned and they never did anything for me either.

So I’m really not sure why I like this album so much but it seems to hit some sort of Venn diagram in my mind between In Utero Nirvana (just some of the intros really mainly), Pavement (the vocals remind me of Malkmus even though the delivery is generally very different, and just some of the song structures too) and Daydream Nation era Sonic Youth (the extended guitar parts especially) but to create something unique of course. I suspect there are far better comparisons with bands I don’t like or have never heard but that’s what I hear.

Anyway yeah it was just a great listen. As I said I don’t really listen to much guitar/vocal type bands so maybe it’s just not natural for me to reach for their albums but I should do much more. It feels like a solid 9 if not 10 really as there really wasn’t anything I didn’t enjoy about listening to it.

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Yeah I get those comparisons, especially as Valentine Card/Kantina/Were, Are and Was or Is is pretty directly influenced by the final triptych at the end of Daydream Nation

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ok, I intended to write this up yesterday but some… stuff, got in the way.

Anyway, here we go.

As I mentioned before, as this was their first material with drummer Sara Lund, Fake Train saw an immediate evolution from the material they had been writing in the two years prior (still find it unreal they only existed for a decade) with original drummer Brandt Sandeno, who the trio had originally formed the band with coming out of high school (meaning they’re still only about 19/20 here!) Lund expressed in the liner notes of the Numero re-issues that she found this particularly challenging fitting into the band (she was recommended by the exiting Sandeno, and friends with Janet Weiss, but not yet in the tight circle the band had formed from being best friends in school) and as a result has said she doesn’t particularly like her playing on this album.

Fake Train may have come on leaps and bounds from their previous material, but it is still a very scrappy album that audibly hasn’t quite figured out what it wants to be just yet. While still very good, Side B suffers from this a little where one gets the impression half the album were made up of songs that had begun life prior to Lund’s arrival, and thus have tendencies to still feel a little bit like the early Nirvana/“grunge” era of a couple years prior.

But the promise this band possessed was immediately apparent. Just starting with opener Dragnalus, an on the face of it, fairly simple song based on two alternating chords, Lund’s off-kilter drumming immediately shows itself, developing a pretty basic idea into a really interesting one. Frontman/guitarist Justin Trospers first scream a minute or so in kicks the song into a whole other gear, a fantastic release of tension from that initial awkward riff, and serves as an early example of what this band would become masters of, winding up and then releasing tension.

Being in Olympia, Washington, naturally, they were around Evergreen College (as the entire music scene was those days really), where a young Conrad Keely, later of …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead was studying. One can understand he was taking notes when track 3, Nervous Energy (a title which pretty perfectly sums up Unwound’s sound in general) came about…

While Unwound were still getting to grips with their new drummer and direction, however, the album’s centrepiece, the 14-minute three-part track ‘Valentine Card / Kantina / Were, Are and Was or Is.’ which was inspired by the final three tracks from Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation. This song would become a definitive statement of the band’s early intent and ambition, becoming a staple of their live shows for the rest of their tenure. All three musicians are on fire here, but this is really bassist Vern Rumsey’s masterstroke here, his basslines on Valentine Card and Kantina respectively are amongst his finest work, propuslive and jaggy, yet catchy and instantly recognisable, it is the spine of the band’s finest work so far and one of their best ever.

In the aftermath lies the gorgeous ‘Honourosis’, an initially pretty delicate song that suddenly whips up into a storm. In the only ever solo set I performed as an adult, I covered this song as it is a beautiful piece to play.

I’ll leave the rest for you guys to discover (any notes so far, new listeners?) but I hope this mini guide helps.

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Nice posts with your initial introduction to the album post and then this write-up @Severed799. Wasn’t sure if I’d manage to keep up with this (failed to keep up with some of the other listening clubs that I’d meant to) but what I’ve read and listened to so far is enticing me back to this one so far, so thanks for doing this.

Only managed to put this album on once in the background while doing other things which probably didn’t do it justice but really liked what I did take in. Think there was a few points where I was actually really enjoying the vocals on this one (where he’s yelling stuff) - think I read quite a lot of criticism of the vocals on the Leaves thread. Also found the rawer more aggressive sound on this one appealing though it’s good that they developed on it.

Looked up to see which track was playing during one of the more interesting bits and the song was Kantina. Can’t say much more than that for now sorry. Will try to give it a proper listen sometime.

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alright let’s do the songs poll!

  • Dragnalus
  • Lucky Acid
  • Nervous Energy
  • Valentine Card
  • Kantina
  • Were, Are and Was or Is
  • Honourosis
  • Pure Pain Sugar
  • Gravity Slips
  • Star Spangled Hell
  • Ratbite
  • Feeling$ Real

0 voters

Have listened twice, and enjoyed it. I gather that there is going to be a Fugazi-like development in sound over the coming albums, so suspect I may enjoy later ones more, but certainly liked this. I bet they were awesome live.

Really enjoyed that centre three-piece of songs. Can also definitely hear where Trail of Dead were influenced by this album. I don’t hear as much grunge coming through as others have mentioned - more second wave US punk and hardcore to my ears, but I’m no expert in those scenes.

Looking forward to more in the coming weeks.

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Thanks! On the grunge thing, this was the album where they kinda passed that, when we go back to listen to the actual debut you’ll hear it more then. They were big fans of local-ish Wipers too though which also accounts for some of it

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I think I enjoyed this more knowing how much I enjoyed where they got to - you can listen out for signs of promise.

Overall a good listen, it feels tense and propulsive, but doesn’t always feel completely natural yet (unlike Leaves) but I am expecting more from the albums to come!

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Yes, Nervous Energy sounds a little like an early forerunner to Mistakes and Regrets to me.

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