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THE SPINY ANTEATERS:
Last Supper CD (BING-014)
Released: 10/98
Well Laid Plans CD (BING-030)
Released: 11/13/2001
Andrew Heisz - guitar, vocals
Marianne Heisz - bass
Ray Bayliss - guitar, vocals
Cathy XXX - drums
“This renowned Ottawa area group are like a musical box of candy that is part Velvet Underground and part Bardo Pond.” Exclaim
“As long as there are bands like the Anteaters, the electric guitar will never disappear. Few bands (if any) display the imagination that consistently marks the engaging music of this Ottawa four- piece.” Ottaway Xpress
A Spiny Anteaters album is a whole and complete entity. Parts can be extrapolated, and can even be held up independently, but to hear a release piecemeal is not to fully understand it. What’s missed is the unifying sense of radically shifting song forms - from layered feedback and distortion to sing-songy measures to elegant, tempered ballads.
After two self-released cassette releases, the band did two albums with Kranky Records, All Is Well and Current. It’s with Last Supper where the band highlighted distortion and abstraction for dramatic effect. The group takes various recording techniques - live and studio sounds, feedback trials, and homemade instrumental tinkering - and mixes them together throughout the piece, creating a kind of studio orchestra of process, as exciting as it is unpredictable.
On Well Laid Plans, the Spinys focus on their melodic end. The twenty tracks on their new record were hammered out over the three-year period since their last release, and each track shows the careful attention it received with subtle overdubs and careful progressions. While still experimenting with their own self-created instruments and trying out varying recording possibilities, the band has written actual songs. It’s the delicate balance one finds on Wire’s 154, The Fall’s Hex Induction Hour and presumably what The Strokes’ second record will sound like. Well Laid Plans reaches far, but it stays focused.
Link to www.thebabyuniverse.com
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