Polyvinyl Records
2001
Mutilate Us
About This Album
After hearing this debut full-length, it's easy to figure out why Brian Sokel and Michael Parsell called their project AM/FM. Their debut album haphazardly charts 75 years of pop history in the course of its 13 songs, while always sounding like its own ragged, off-kilter self. Mutilate Us seemingly incorporates a little bit of everything -- late-night paeans, open-plains balladeering, glazed-over '70s rock, cluttered indie pop -- then wraps it in a skewered lo-fi package to give it context and date it decidedly to the postmodern 21st century. They are just as capable of turning a cover of the Beach Boys' "Disney Girls" into a wispy, romantic Elliott Smith tune (which they do) or plucking a new wave melody from their memories and mutating it into strummed country crooning. And the wild variety of genres and subgenres collide head-on, creating oddly warped, wire-crossed hybrids, the parts of which are impossible to peel away from one another. "Those Long Arms" turns sh*t-kicker country into indie rock so that the final product doesn't really sound country at all except in fits and starts. The first half of "Yours Recklessly" sounds like a beaten-down, sepia-toned Appalachian ballad by using nothing but skeletal acoustic guitars, woeful Hammond organ, and some heartbreakingly lonesome co-ed harmonies.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,5,6 and 11)

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