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.
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