Album Review: Pinback - Information Retrieved

The quality of musicianship on a Pinback album is always standout, and Information Retrieved, their fifth album, five years in the making, is no exception. Rob Crow's guitar work is as percussive as it is melodic; the nuances of paradoxically frantic but rigorously controlled guitar lines offer up countless polyrhythms as palm-muted strokes, gently attacked strings and clockwork-like fretwork provide the perfect counter to brisk, crisp percussion and form a shameless 'adult contemporary' funk. Bassist Armistead Burwell Smith IV has relentless momentum, his runs as quaintly dexterous as the guitar work but with added heft; songs such as Sherman and A Request threaten to become lost in their cyclic selves and their dense rhythmic thickets Smith swiftly and smoothly drives them on.

It takes a while to sink into this – that is, properly sink in and experience it beyond the surface-level head-bobbing and embarrassing punch-fuelled white man dancing it immediately invites – for that very reason; somewhere in every beat is an accent, a point of interest, and while the skill of Pinback allows a perfectly enjoyable ignorant listen, the slightly more overwhelming practice of sinking into the misleadingly dense rhythmic architecture is all the more rewarding.

Crow's vocals – an oddly scientific melancholy ever present – are put through their paces on this album, his ordinarily pleasant delivery (ie. the kind that gets you on an OC soundtrack) strained on the likes of Proceed To Memoryand True North (where a reaching Crow sounds eerily reminiscent of Dexter Holland).

Marvel at meter, bop along to their pop and enjoy the realisation that subtle needn't discount substance.