Best New Atlanta Music: Untied States – “Instant Everything, Constant Nothing” LP
“Sonic Youth are like the Beatles to me” – That quote from Untied States‘ Skip Engelbrecht in 2003 was my first introduction to this band, and it resonated deeply with me at the time because it echoed exactly how I felt. A year later they released their first full length, Ineffable, By Design, and it turned out to be one hell of a debut and the most criminally underrated record to ever come out of this city. Rather than falling in the all too common pitfall of simply ripping off the sounds of their influences, Engelbrecht and his partner in crime, Colin Arnstein, instead adopted the abstract musical philosophies of the Youth and used them as tools to express their own unique personal vision. They strengthened melodies by juxtaposing them with dissidence. They balanced weirdness with catchy hooks. But they always focused those ideals through their own lens and in the end they emerged as innovators rather than imitators, the greatest tribute possible to their inspiration.
With their third LP, Instant Everything, Constant Nothing, they have traded away the gritty, raw home recording sound for glossy, polished, professional production quality. Those already familiar with US may see this album as a move away from their avant-garde roots, but that would be a misinterpretation of what this band is all about. Many musicians that wear the “experimental” tag proudly are content to bang away at noise and amble around aimlessly and believe what they are doing is “artistic”. But when it comes down to it, the results are always more important than the approach. In the world of science, it is the people who make actual discoveries from their experiments that are considered great, and I feel no differently about the world of music. From the very beginning, Untied States had been in the business of making spectacular pop music by searching out inventive and novel ways to do so, and Instant Everything, Constant Nothing is the triumphant culmination of that scholarly quest. Get your ears on the current high water mark of one of the greatest bands Atlanta has ever known:
Untied States : Not Fences, Mere Masks
Untied States : Holding Up Walls
Buy Instant Everything, Constant Nothing
Untied States will be at 529 with Small Reactions and Doppel Gang Thursday, November 19th.
- Posted by Davy Minor on November 9, 2009 at 11:57 pm
