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.
