What the hell happened to these guys? They sort of just fell off the map completely. Weren't they at one time supposed to be the "next big thing" in indie rock? The next Pavement, I seem to recall. Yep, back in the day, New Radiant Storm King had all the right connections: they called Amherst, Massachusetts home and hung with the Scud Mountain Boys, Guided by Voices, and the Silver Jews, among others. They even had a breakthrough album with 1996's Hurricane Necklace. Everyone I knew loved that record when it was first released, and it's a bit curious that nobody seems to remember it now.
Reason for this, I hypothesize, has something to do with the combination of slacker-rock being dead and gone (at least until its impending revival in 2011), and that the band was, frankly, completely and totally cursed when its came to record labels. Suffice it to say they were just one of many talented bands to fall through the cracks when Rough Trade's American division folded-- and that was just the beginning of their problems. They soldiered on, but during the past few years, the band simply disappeared, its members presumably pursing higher degrees.
Now, after much line-up shifting and label-hopping, New Radiant Storm King have pulled it together for Winter's Kill. At the center of the band remains the songwriting duo of Peyton Pinkerton and Matt Hunter, sharing vocal duties (both with a slightly affected British accent) and swapping guitar, bass, and a whole basement full of keyboards. Sadly, what they've turned out is far from groundbreaking. What it is is a solid collection of short, complex, introspective pop songs, sounding a lot like GBV if Pollard went on a heavy singer/songwriter-record-and-used-book-buying binge.
Right from the first song, "In the Spirit of Distance," it's obvious these guys still have too many brain cells left to be compared too closely with GBV, talking about "a portrait of Dorian Gray" and all, though the melody does seem to lift from those other notorious drunkards, the Replacements-- most notably their song "Sixteen." On "Golden Parachute," the Radiant ones drop little nuggets of wisdom on you like, "Keep your suitcase close to your heart," while the shimmering Rhodes-heavy "Colony Falls" imparts, "You need to get lost to find out what you know." Hey, it's a didactic album, and worthy lessons all, if delivered a bit on the stiff and stodgy side.
And that's really the only fault with this album: many of the songs are a bit too precious and sober. I respect restraint as long as it's kept in check. On Winter's Kill, though, I found myself wanting the odd little tempo changes or spaced-out interludes (such as the finale "View of a Wedding through the Hubble Telescope") to stray into weirder territory, and on the rare occasions where the band attempts to kick out the jams, it would've been nice had they been kicked with a wee bit more oomph. But maybe I'm just missing the higher subtleties. I can see how this album is a consciously constructed 'grower.' It's not the work of a band trying to capture some quick attention with clumsy stabs at the latest trends, and in some ways, with its lack of laptop glitchery and primal screaming, it does come off somewhat conservative. But maybe it's for this very reason that this album could prove to hold up better than the recent work of some other members of indie rock's illustrious Class of '92.
