Post Marked Stamps

(Tree)
by Tim Den

I was excited as hell when I first got this. Beautiful layout, beautiful concept, great bands like Braid, Rainer Maria, Very Secretary, Ida, Ethel Meserve, and Aspera Ad Astra – how can you go wrong? To my dismay, it does. Clocking in at over 70 minutes, Post Marked Stamps offers song after song of drowned-out, lazy-sounding music that could put the most hyperactive kid to sleep. I don’t mean the songs are slow and therefore boring, but that these songs have very little substance to keep listeners interested. Bands like Still Life, The Deadwood Divine, Giants Chair, and the mysterious A Minor Forest all deliver that Midwest open sound effectively, but all are lacking something more solid. Some songs just drag on aimlessly, and for too long. Granted, some of the songs make me envision the tranquil highways of the Indiana plateaus, but they also make me want my pillow. Badly. Such a shame, because there’s more than plenty of potential in the line-up. Other bands appearing: Cerebrus Shoal, Compound Red, Jen Wood, Hal Al Shedad, Sweep The Leg Johnny, Haelah, Tim Kinsella, and The Get Up Kids (whose “I’m a Loner Dottie, a Rebel…” is actually not as bad as their other stuff).
(PO Box 578582 Chicago, IL 60657)