...Well?

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This is just one of those albums, 2004-10-25
This needs ten stars, so I am giving it 10 stars, even though amazon will not allow me to do it. br / br /This is the 90's best album. The best of the gritty grunge, post punk, pre indie-pop music. It is dark and seductive. Subtle yet so f****** powerfull. This album summarizes the 90s. Better than Nirvana, and I am a Nirvana fan. If you think that is an over statement, just buy the album and see for yourself. br / br /From start to finish, this album churns, boils, dissolves, as the lyrics swell into perfect clarity for moments of pure bliss, to the tortured drone of unexpected hope: br /"Quiting time so I waited for the sun to bring my good-night, br / I had the neccissary fear, and it was all right, br / I would not ever do a thing to save my own life, br / So I sat down to sit and think under the moonlight. br / Love has a homicidal feel with every good-bye, br / And its the perfect way to get on someones good side, br / Maybe the only thing you'll finish in your whole life, br / Which is exactly what you need to make you feel right." br /The ending lines on the last track of the album, the softly spoken pain in the singers voice with a collage of guitar overlapping to smooth over the pissed-off-jazz drum riff. br / br /finally, after about 10 or so minutes of silence, a hidden track titled "a rainy night in august" wich begins with the sounds of San Francisco traffic splashing about as you listen to the band play a song from their first album in the background, as if you are standing outside their studio in the rain listening, wishing you could be warm, inside, and upstairs to hear them in all their glory. br / br /If you like music of ANY kind, I recommend you look into Swell.

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Peace Man Comes in Last, 2003-03-18
...Well? announces it's arrival to you ears with an echoing pulse of sound. a hot dry wind coming off a desert feels just like this. the rhythm guitar is understated - soulful, calm, simmering - and the lyrics are delivered as though the speaker isn't more than a couple feet away. he sounds as though he is laying out facts, surveying the area, and preparing to dig for water. the music progresses with economy, and delivers complexities in judicious amounts. the choruses feature a low-fi raspy electric guitar that is immensely satisfying, especially from soon-to-be-blown speakers. brEVERYTHING is a stuttering, progressive manifesto with dry, detached lyrics like "maybe the stars can decide, or maybe they're too damn tired," and, "I raise my hell up so very high." the refrain after the second verse uses unusual chords to transition as the bass and drums sequentially fall back into the mix and land us in a different place than we startedbrDOWN begins with a cascading riff, more spoken word type singing, and features a spare, beautiful transition that makes ample use of quiet introspective moments. the end becomes surreal when it descends into the sounds of people talking and glasses clinking in a restaurant.brIT'S OKAY is what i always thought of as "the cow song," because I just had a tape with no song titles. their is a low mmmmm-ing sound in the background as the bass drones, building momentum until a marching percussion lifts you out of the dust into a gritty jet stream. this song flies over expansive landscapes chasing the horizon. very few of the lyrics are intelligible, although he seems to be talking about a woman. the roiling guitar work toward the end feels like rafting down river rapids in slow motion. brPRICE is the obvious radio song with a winning guitar riff into which the singer weaves the grateful but disembodied declarations of a survivor. behind his depression and anger is a growing sense of relief and hopefulness. brthese songs caught me at the perfect time, the early 90s, when i saw one tragedy after another. the music of Swell was like a groundswell of encouragement, the testimony of someone else who had been there - someone else with a thousand mile stare. brthe album ends with two more gems, WASH YOUR BRAIN and SUICIDE MACHINE which confront more directly what the singer has been alluding to until now. his words have weight without shouting. he winds up with a multi-layered statement, "we've got nowhere to go, but then nothin's too far," and a whole series of less intelligible conclusions that allow you to pencil in your own words, names, situations. the poem recedes into a repeating guitar chord that echoes off into the same undefined plane it came from.