Steps to the Light
(Big Top)
Since those mid-80’s salad days of indie-rock glory, two instrumental bands that have hung out in those circles deserve to be drooled over. One is Pell Mell, a wiry outfit from the the Pacific Northwest that created melodically groovy wordless gobs of sound that stuck almost perfectly in the craw. The second is those lo-fi mavens with record collections bigger than some folks houses, Uncle Wiggly, whose Farfetchedness was one of last year’s overlooked stunners and was long on brains to boot. Happily, the debut recording from The Up On In shares many traits with those twin pillars.
The connection many fans will make with The Up On In is drummer Zach Barocas, who used to bang skins in Jawbox. Nowhere near the post-emo-core smack of that band’s J. Robbins, (though he did produce the disc) Steps To the Light makes its way through the difficult task of working with words with loud/soft passages and solid variation. Hardly ever are bassist Charlie Bennett and stringbender Ryan Grayson playing the same pattern. It’s mostly situations like the one created by “Montreal/My Tribe/Virgil Thompson”, a faux suite that finds the string men hustling in big loping patterns after each other, occasionally pausing together for a breath, then sprinting out again.
Unlike many instrumental bands that drug it up, plug it in, turn on the tape recorder and call it an album, The Up On In has sanded, stained and painted these 14 cuts down to finished products that would make Norm from New Yankee Workshop nod in appreciation. The key is most certainly the tirelessly inventive stickwork of Barocas, who never fails to come up something that will perk up even the most worn-out indie rock ears. Dig his souped-up march tempo in “First Time, Long Time” or the propulsive rimshots in “Bag Is Full”; any amateur drummer would do well to study this album when they think they’ve gotten pretty good, then they’ll know how much more they still have to learn.
The factor that seals the deal on Steps For the Light is actually a hackneyed cliche. It’s the same old axiom worked up in those same long-ago mid 80’s alluded to earlier, which went something like this: if a record keeps getting better the more it plays, then in the heavy rotation it stays. Well friends, Steps For the Light really does do just that, and The Up On In are even kind enough to provide a great description of their winning instrumental doings right there on track number 12, a piece called “Roil & Churn”. Everyone up on in, the water’s just fine!
Stinkweeds, 2000
