Taxidermists are to Pavement/Duster what Fat History Month are to Modest Mouse/Built To Spill. Does that compute? Or maybe: Taxidermists are to Stephen Malkmus what Purling Hiss are to Kurt Cobain. Hell I don’t know, Honesty Box is such an anomaly amid my tape pile I’m ready to praise it to high heavens without even being done with the first side. Half-cocked? Maybe, but I know what I like, and more importantly, I know what I’ve been missing… or at least I thought I did. Taxidermists have me rejiggering my entire listening schedule. They jar loose long-lost indie-rock memories, like my late buddy Scott J., who was an encyclopedia of Up/K/etc. and would LOVE this tape if he were with us to experience it. He was a huge Archers Of Loaf guy, of course. Random thought: This group should tour with Adam Harding. So authentic, so fragile, so wise in their unorthodox choices over the course of eight legendary entries, Taxidermists put their message across equally well with plump distortion or haunting, minor-chord subtlety. In fact I might prefer the latter by a hair, but that’s neither/nor, as I’m genuinely smitten by the tactics employed on Honesty Box from top to bottom. I hear a lot of parallels between the clean-guitar moments and what one would expect from a Back Magic composition; then the heavy guitars chime in and it’s a much more diverse universe of sound that could be pinned on all sorts of antecedents that I don’t have the time to mention. If you subtract the heavier moments, the Duster comparison holds the most weight. Where the vocals are concerned, I must again risk out-and-out flattery and venture that they’re perfect, in every way. Maybe even old-Weezer-ish when the singer strains to soar above the dirty-sludgy mess of the guitar-led choruses. And if that sounds like a dig, I’ll have you know a I possess a treasure trove of memories associated with the first two Weezer records. Just for posterity. Where were we? Oh yeah: I’ll close this out by affirming my support for the Taxidermists project one last time. Don’t miss out on Taxidermists if you feel golden-age indie still has something to offer the jaded (which it absolutely does).
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