Fivehead - Guests of the Nation

Genre Rock Publisher Tight Spot Records External Links Official Site Tight Spot

While it's probably not recommendable to openly ape another band, I couldn't help but think of Archers of Loaf while listening to Fivehead's Guests of the Nation.

Reviving Archers of Loaf signature sound is never a bad idea for this writer's sake, as I was quite a fan. After all, I've wondered for a long time on how Pavement became so much more icons of their era while Archers were something of an afterthought. Even Sebadoh were more relatively popular than Archers were, though that may have had something to do with the marketing department of Sub Pop than the bands' music.

Fivehead has proven two things to be true about the American indie-rock scene of the early '90s. (1) Guitars can still be good and useful. (2) Production doesn't have to be punchy to be good.

Fivehead's sound is raucous in an anxious, energetic way. There are slashing, interweaving guitar parts reminiscent of Web in Front-era Archers of Loaf.

And just because it is a throwback in sound to the early '90s, doesn't mean it's grungy, the grunge scene being one of the biggest misrepresentations of that era of American indie-rock.

Rather it takes that era's desires for experimentation as its lead off, most evidently in lead singer John Hunt's playing banjo. Hunt's understated playing on Hem and Haw, the album's best song, is perfectly integrated into the tune.

Fivehead also share an affinity with the way Archers of Loaf produced their records, which were modest, almost anti-commercial in nature, and always sounded as if they were playing games with the tape without sounding overworked. Fivehead comes across as mid-fi, not bad enough to sound like a friend's old four-track tape but not clean enough to sound like they're begging for a major label deal either.

What we have instead are knotty guitar riffs as featured on Big Mistake Factory and memorable choruses such as the ones found on Spit It Out.

Maybe it's wrong to try to bring back the American-indie scene of ten years ago. But Fivehead shows that that scene hasn't yet run out of ideas.