Archers of Loaf :: Icky Mettle (Reissues)

For over a decade now I’ve been waving the indie rock flag on a daily basis, in love with the romance of jeaned-out slackers in Chuck Taylors who sleep on floors, design their own album covers, live in vans, love jangle-y guitars (and, secretly, Paul McCartney), record in basements and worship equally at the thrones of Ray Davies, Lou Reed, Charles Bukowski and Steve Albini. Truth be told, I was a baseball smacking pre-teen during the glory years of indie rock, back when seminal records like Guided by Voices Bee Thousand, Beat Happening’s Your Turn Me On, Galaxie 500′s On Fire, Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted, Sonic Youth’s Goo, Sebadoh’s III and even Built to Spill’s There’s Nothing Wrong with Love were new to record store stands. And so when I come across a band I missed along the way (a few years ago it was Chavez, Railroad Jerk and Red Red Meat; more recently it’s been Eleventh Day Dream, Polvo and Superchunk), it’s not at all unlike finding a pot of gold. My latest personal treasure find, Archers of Loaf, come from the same Chapel Hill scene, coincidentally, that produced Superchunk and Polvo. The Archer’s debut record, Icky Mettle, came to my attention just as it was recently reissued in deluxe format by the great Merge Records, who remastered and repackaged not only the original 13-song tracklist, but also offer up a second disc stocked with plenty of era-specific bonus material.

Opener “Web in Front,” a two-minute pop jam with bouncy vocals and dirty jangle, hooked me immediately, reminding me a bit of a more-garage-friendly version of The Ass Ponys, a criminally unknown band who came around years after the Archers were already rolling. It’s a great opening to a great album that kicked off the career of a great band. Frontman Eric Bachmann sings – often with a punk range – vocals that perfectly embrace the anti-establishment apathy of the time without ever hinting at the pop-punk vibes of brother band Superchunk. As the record wears on we hear a number of different approaches from Bachmann, who, like Frank Black or Stephen Malkmus or Thurston Moore, presumedly spent ample time finding ways to use his not-so-classically-great voice in effective ways. Rock n’ roll ways that stink of booze and buried hope.

The record seals the deal quickly, as track four, “You and Me,” explodes into an array of classic indie rock guitar madness. There’s nothing here your local guitar hero probably can’t do in his sleep, I know, but when crescendos such as the one on this particular track arrive out of nowhere, for the first time, it’s hard not to simultaneously hit the “rep”t and “volume up” buttons. “Might,” another big standout, feels like your classic early-to-mid-90s non-grunge single, made perfect for “120 Minutes” or a promo MTV would run in-between Liquid Television segments. The key here, with this record, is the energy we hear on nearly every track. It’s not pop-punk or power-pop or grunge or even pop. It’s not punk or garage rock either. Icky Mettle is simply high-engery indie rock, where the squealing guitars and slacker vocals mix just right, the result sounding – at least on tracks like “Hate Paste” – like a souped up version of Red Red Meat or a more straight-forward, less abstract Pavement. Or maybe a sound in the middle of those two things, if you could imagine such a thing.

The first disc of this reissue is the record proper: 13 songs spread out over about 38 minutes. Four of the songs are two minutes or less, one is over four minutes and the rest clock in right around three minutes. Pop songs, really, but with jagged guitars and drunken, spirited vocals that scream “mid-90s” as much as any band from the era. I’ve not heard the original issue of the album, but I assume the remaster job here, handled by the great Bob Weston (once a member of Volcano Suns and Shellac and now a member of Misson of Burma), is a nice improvement. In addition to the core album we also get a nice digipack shell, liner notes by Robert Christgau and, of course, the above mentioned second disc of era-specific goodies. Mostly, you get The Greatest of All Time EP in whole, a few singles and b-sides and some alternate recordings of album tracks. Of the 14 tracks on the bonus disc, seven are very solid, almost making for a whole new mini-album of little known material from what I’m told is prime-era Archers. Not a bad bonus.

As great as the still-recent Merge reissue of Superchunk’s No Pocky for Kitty is, I think I’d give the nod to Icky Mettle, if mostly because it’s the lesser known record. Also, Pocky fells more like a pop-punk blueprint than it does a great record. Mettle, the Archers’ first, and probably best, release is classic indie rock. Classic mid-90s rock, back when “indie rock” really meant something. If you’re like me and you love Sonic Youth and The Breeders and The Pixies and even new bands like Yuck and Girls, be sure to pick up this reissue of Icky Mettle and set aside an afternoon for flannel, warm beer and loud volume. Maybe call in sick and forget all the gaggy turns the world has taken since The Archers called it quits in 1998. Reissue of the year? Yeah, maybe.

89/100