Thursday, May 26, 2016

The Raymond Brake - Piles of Dirty Winters (1995, Simple Machines)

Nineties indie rock in North Carolina.  On one hand you had the "kingpins" like Superchunk, Archers of Loaf, and technically (though they stuck out like a sore thumb) Ben Folds Five.  On the other were a bevy of striving hopefuls including, but not limited to Polvo, Spatula, Minerva Strain and The Raymond Brake.  I was pretty wowed with Piles of Dirty Winters when it dropped some twenty-one years ago.  More recently, my adherence to this one has wavered.  Back then I picked up on RB's pop overtones which were somehow more evident at the time, but in retrospect it's obvious this Greensboro quartet took Polvo's fractured ball o' dissonance and ran with it big time.  That being said, Raymond Brake had a heightened awareness of melody embedded within the noisy. tone-bending confines of "New Wave Dream," "Dolley Madison" and "Philistine" - I just wish that same magic had reared it's head on a more consistent basis.  Midway trough Piles... we're offered a bit of a respite from RB's copious feedback-laden angularities via the lo-fi acoustic "The Long Sleep."  There were singles surrounding the album as well as a subsequent ep, Never Work Ever.  In addition to Polvo, if Edsel and Half Hour to Go did the trick for you, check this out.

01. Philistine
02. Filthy Lucre
03. Shooting in the Dark
04. New Wave Dream
05. Funeral Bride
06. Laying Down
07. The Long Sleep
08. Dolley Madison
09. Slink Moss
10. Never Felt Better
11. Whistler
12. Visit to Bdlam

Hear