Flip through your calendars and count the days: It's been nearly fifteen years since Chicago's Eleventh Dream Day released the Wayne EP and its accompanying full-length, Prairie School Freakout. And although the manic-panicked smoke of the late 80s/early 90s alt-rock boom has long since cleared, a handful of acts have yet to see their legacy become the namedrop-du-jour for wristbanded up-and-comers or bespectacled college radio purists (see the somehow-still-ubiquitous Sonic Youth, the beloved Pixies, or the soon-to-be-reissued Dinosaur Jr). For whatever reason, Eleventh Dream Day are still waiting to be slapped with a golden sticker of canonical approval, despite the necessary elements already sitting firmly in place (a disastrous major label tenure at Atlantic, distant boy/girl interplay, tons of distorted guitar, and general commercial unresponsiveness). Until now, Eleventh Dream Day have been strangely excluded from the 120 Minutes nostalgia club, which is stupid, considering the band's palpable influence and impressive fury.
Unsurprisingly, Prairie School Freakout eventually fell out of print, prompting Chicago-based indie Thrill Jockey to reissue the record, along with the Wayne EP, as a double package. Recorded in six sweaty hours in a polluted Louisville swelter, Prairie School Freakout is a frantic, occasionally hysterical burst of irrepressible guitar rock that the band admits is "pretty much live," save a dubbed bass note and some extra guitar squeal. Picking up and moving past where the band's eponymous debut left off, Prairie School ultimately solidified EDD's mission as super-distorted Crazy Horse disciples with an overabundance of post-adolescent fervor. And some insanely loud amps.
As sticky and pure as the transplanted living room on its cover, Prairie School opens with boiler "Watching the Candles Burn", a fiery guitar assault in possession of the greatest bad insult ever ("If looks could kill/ Here's looking at you"), and follows up with "Sweet Smell", another prickly guitar throwdown. Nearly everything about Prairie School Freakout is unapologetic, but frontman Rick Rizzo and guitarist Baird Figi's ridiculous guitar solos are just so audaciously wanky that it's almost impossible not to stick your tongue out and air along with them. Janet Beveridge Bean's drums (check her in Freakwater) and Douglas McComb's bass (check him in Tortoise, Aluminum Group and Brokeback) are both driven and perfectly able, although the throbbing rhythm occasionally seems like just an excuse to slather on more guitar. Still, the hyper, overwhelming kinetics at work here are clearly the product of four reeling heads, and while Prairie School Freakout may not be EDD's most accomplished or comprehensive effort, it's certainly their most explosive.
The very best reissues create tiny glitches in our cultural timelines-- conceptually, they challenge music to supercede its original context, and to translate itself into an entirely new (and sometimes drastically different) artistic lexicon. Obviously, nothing is ever realized within a cultural vacuum, but that doesn't necessarily deny records a capacity for timelessness-- the best albums can be appreciated both inside and outside of their founding circumstances. Prairie School Freakout may be instantly recognizable as a holdover from the pre-grunge alt-rock rise, but it's still got plenty of ass-kicking glory left inside. Which, as far as legacies go, really isn't too bad.
