I read somewhere or other that indie is dead, a statement which, as popular as it is to refer to musical genres as ‘dead,’ strikes me as an almost astronomical overstatement. If you want to know where the pulse is for people who purchase records with money and attend live concerts (as opposed to digging deep on the internet and never spending a penny), look no further than the garage scene, care of labels like Castle Face, In the Red, Goner, and Slovenly, which serve as a farm-league presence for upper-indie labels like Drag City to pluck their rosters from. That seems to be where a lot of the energy is in the underground, and while it’s not precisely where my head is at these days, I’m glad the magic is alive no matter where it’s coming from. Enter the Milvia Son label, an outfit seemingly bent on extracting the slightly skewed derivations of the genre for those of us who wouldn’t know where to look for it, and you have a pretty important wild-card presence. Birthed on cassette in 1988, O-Type’s Darling is what you might call, special. It doesn’t need the same things most rock records need. It craves extra attention even when you don’t have it to give. It seems to have a speech impediment. And if you’re looking for an unblinking take on absurdist lo-fi rock, it will stay with you like a bad memory. Only apply if you’ve had the following experiences: passing out to Ed Schrader fronting Live Skull; waking up with a Feeding Tube attached; accompanying 39 Clocks to a Random Victim concert; or pressing the flesh with The Rebel, US Maple, and Rapider Than Horsepower before they were born. Shit, is that enough? More than; thanks for playing.
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