No Respect: Evergreen

Evergreen - S/T

   It could be a stretch to say this album doesn't get any respect. Most people who've listened to it have been impressed, and it'd be a fruitless search to find a bad review of this album. Evergreen wasn't missing appreciation, but wide attention. Call it a case of right place, wrong time. Evergreen was formed in the fruitful Louisville scene of the 90's, a scene that produced both Slint and Will Oldham's many guises. But the album was released in the mid 90's by a small Chicago label during a time when arty post rock was reaching full steam. Also during a time when Chicago noise rock and Wicker Park as the new Seattle weren't punch lines. Although Evergreen played garage rock not too distant from the sound of grimy Chicago at the time (Shellac, Urge Overkill, Jesus Lizard, etc.) and featured Slint's Brit Walford on drums (while the music world was beginning to appreciate Spiderland) Evergreen didn't last past one album. I wasn't around at the time, so I can't begin to speak to how or why. But when I listen to this album in the context of the rest of the 90's midwest underground (a diverse scene and arguably an apex, at least in Chicago) this album doesn't sit well with its peers, even though it bears enough similarities.

   It's also worth mentioning that this album was recorded by James Murphy and Nicolas Vernhes at the Rare Book Room. James Murphy's career need no introduction after the early aughts and Nicholas Vernes has since produced masterpieces with the Silver Jews, Animal Collective, and Deerhunter and his studio is arguably one of the most revered in independent music.

   I mention Murphy because he's arguably why this album was re-released a couple of years ago. Either that or Slint's newfound cultural significance at the time. This is how I heard of Evergreen, through a promotional MP3 of "Plastic Bag," which I should mention, is not a particularly strong track. I knew nothing about this band at the time, just a weird song that creeped along with a bizarre Fall style chorus. It was hard to find more of their stuff on the illegal internet, but I eventually tracked down "New York City" and "Whip Cream Bottle" which were stronger and even stranger. I couldn't place what it was that had me hooked, but once I found out that Walford was the drummer, it was enough track down a physical copy.

   I want to say it was near summer when I finally got the CD. I'd also like think the first time I listened to it the whole way through was driving back to South Bend alone, but this seems implausible. I can say that it's perfect driving music, especially if your driving through a place that's not entirely beautiful. The music is dark, muscular, muddy, and inebriated, some of my favorite qualities in music by far. It's also a bit obtuse and diffused, which is a strange thing to say about a garage band. Some of this is thanks to Murphy and Vernhes production, which here owes a lot to Steve Albini, maybe turned down a little. Every sound lives in physical space, nothing is in the red or right in your face, a risky proposition for such a powerful band. It works, especially when turned up really loud and the band sounds like it's actually in your room, or your car is a small music venue.

   The band has some simple goals here, get drunk, get loud, get weird, rock out. By all accounts they succeed. In the process they also created an album that could be mistaken for the debut of a much greater band. Despite the fuck-all attitude and disinterest in saying anything coherent, Evergreen made a well paced album that has more than enough golden moments, the kind of moments that push a pretty good album into the realm of great albums. It's a stretch to call this a lost great album let alone a forgotten masterpiece. Yet, there are enough signs that this band took it's music seriously, and it's those moments that keep me coming back to this record. One of these moments falls right after the breakdown in "Klark Kent." After a pound your door down beginning, the band falls into tight mid-tempo stomp, guitars wobbling around like they're out of breath and then Sean McLoughlin slurs "We were suckled in the swamplands... Raised on revolution..." This moment of accidental brilliance is like dancing your ass off at a party then bullshitting with your friends until three in the morning, and right as the conversation is winding down, as everyone reaches the end of their raucous laughter, your buddy suddenly says something cryptic and strangely poignant. Half of your friends look at each other like WTF while you wonder drunkenly whether or not you just heard some strange confession or prophecy. It's not elegant or even very poetic, but within the context it's a beautiful moment, a moment where words and music push you back into your messy unconscious where everything is profound and strange.

   From the what-the-fuck-is-that cover art to the plodding synth lines of the instrumental "New York City" Evergreen is perfectly at home confounding any expectation, even to a fault. I suppose they wouldn't have any of this mystique had I been around Kentucky in 1995. But then again, maybe I would have been proud to have such a singular rock act hail from my hometown. Either way, I'm happy to let this album make me believe I'm there: drunk in someones basement deep in the hilly woods of suburban Louisville, listening to the best band no one's ever heard of.

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