Download: Archers of Loaf, ‘What Did you Expect’

Kevin Bronson on
2

Despite their critical plaudits, I never figured Archers of Loaf to be anything more than ’90s middleweights whose intentionally skewered guitars (er, “cognitive dissonance”) and lyrical abstractions (wink, wink) were at best a welcome relief from the mainstream. Then rap-rock happened, and the Aughts came, and then indie rock turned to soul-sucking genre fashion statements, and … damn, don’t “Icky Mettle,” “Vee Vee,” “All the Nations Airports” and “White Trash Heroes” sound good today? Eric Bachmann and crew surprised everybody with a surprise reunion show in January and are following it up with a tour. (Sasquatch was very good, from all reports.) And today Merge announced that 1993’s “Icky Mettle” will get the re-release treatment on Aug. 2. Included in the extras: “What Did You Expect,” a song from an out-of-print 7-inch, which on most indie-rock albums today would sound like a hit.

||| Download: “What Did You Expect”

[audio:http://www.mergerecords.com/audio/archers/What-Did-You-Expect.mp3]

||| Live: Archers of Loaf play tonight and Saturday (sold out) at the Troubadour.