Pinback, "Autumn of the Seraphs"pick

San Diego’s favorite indie rockers are ready for their mainstream close-up

By Andy Hermann, Metromix

September 10, 2007

Critic's Rating:
4 1/2

Pinback, "Autumn of the Seraphs"
Autumn of the Seraphs
Release date:
September 11, 2007
Artist/Band name:
Pinback
Record label:
Touch & Go
Official Web Site:
http://www.pinback.com/
Overall User Rating:
0 (0 ratings)
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Backstory: San Diego buddies Rob Crow and Armistead Burwell “Zach” Smith took breaks from their main bands—Heavy Vegetable and Three Mile Pilot, respectively—to record their first album as Pinback in 1999. Eight years and four albums later, Pinback has become Crow and Smith’s main gig, propelled to ever-greater success thanks to an increasingly polished sound and a hit song, “Fortress,” featured on the soundtrack to “The OC.”

Why you should care: Few rock bands have a sound as immediately recognizable as Pinback’s. Deceptively simple, poppy vocals and guitar hooks weave into hypnotically intricate patterns, held together by Smith’s extraordinary basslines, which are as melodic as those of New Order's Peter Hook and as rhythmically propulsive as Sting’s in the Police’s heyday.

Verdict: “Autumn of the Seraphs” is the album that should finally give Pinback both the commercial success and critical adoration they’ve long deserved. Opening track “From Nothing to Nowhere” is their most barnstorming rocker to date, while “Blue Harvest” borrows a lick or two from “Message in a Bottle” to kick-start one of the duo’s most colorful swirls of interlocking melody. Crow and Smith manage to pack three albums’ worth of ideas into 11 tracks without ever sounding hurried or unfocused. Songs start in one place and end up somewhere completely different, but the journey from point A to point B is never less than mesmerizing.

X-Factor: For a band known for cryptic lyrics, “Walters” is a surprising departure: a straightforward tribute to Larry Walters, the man who achieved immortality by using helium-filled weather balloons to float in his lawnchair to a height of 16,000 feet.