Pinback bring to mind clockwork: Individually, Rob Crow's guitar and the accompanying drum machines and live percussionists are crisp and sucked dry of reverb, precisely ticking like second hands. Collectively, Crow and bassist Armistead Burwell Smith IV don't overlap so much as interlock like gears and cogs, all doing their part in establishing a consistent momentum. It's also true in the larger, metaphysical sense that you can "set your watch" to Pinback. No matter how quickly time flies metaphorically, Pinback keep their own internal pace, independent of all outside noise occurring in the typically long gaps between their full-lengths. So it makes sense that, despite being five years in the making, their fifth LP, Information Retrieved, turns out to be another chance to identify What Pinback Do, celebrate it, and also acknowledge its limitations.
Though it lacks the overt seasonal appellations of Summer in Abbadon and Autumn of the Seraphs, Information Retrieved does follow the chronology of its immediate predecessors into the feel of the wintry months. But as with previous openers "Non-Photo Blue" and "From Nothing to Nowhere", "Proceed to Memory" gets Pinback's blood pumping just fast enough to lead you to believe this might be the album where they push for urgency over nuance. The lattices of palm-muted guitar and bass are instantly identifiable as their own, though it's chestier than usual thanks to a pleasingly strident vocal performance from Crow. Otherwise, the highlights typically function like illusions: Crow's melodies are almost subliminal as opposed to hummable, and whether it's the seemingly gaudy Cap'n Jazz-like riff that opens "Glide" or the handclapped breakdown of "His Phase", everything is more aerodynamic than it initially sounds. A good Pinback song can feel like hopping aboard an already moving vehicle.
They still don't sound remotely like any other band besides Three Mile Pilot, with whom they have shared members, and granting listeners the ability to recognize that after a long hiatus often results in warm initial receptions for Pinback LPs. But this almost always wanes since there isn't a lot of wiggle room in the niche they've created for themselves. "Should it be so hard to have a nice day?" Crow bays during "Diminished", faintly funky and faintly jazzy in the way Pinback's piano-led songs are. And sometimes listening to Pinback, it does feel like having a nice day or any kind of base pleasure is something that has to be micromanaged within the sterilized environment they create. There are faster Pinback songs, but none that really rock-- "His Phase" comes closest, mostly because if it were distorted and pitched down an octave, you could imagine Crow's Goblin Cock side-project stealing it.
Lending a critical ear to Crow's lyrics for any sort of indication of what motivates this band can prove perplexing. They're not quite stream of consciousness, but a good Pinback song can make you think you've snooped on a conversation already in progress. And here, there's a strange computerized syntax to a lot of them, taking after the record's robotic title: "I might fall/ I might break down/ But no one can outstyle you there," Crow offers on "Drawstring", sounding too stoic to even sweat. On "Sherman", he threatens, "Your thoughts are horrible/ You will be punished for them." As Information Retrieved cruises towards its end, the mere title of "Denslow, You Idiot!" pops for a band that never favors any sort of musical exclamation points-- dig deeper into its arrangement and you mostly just find drily delivered Colin Meloy-isms: "You infantile cad/ You must have gone mad to be so vile," "Revising these texts is a brazen sin/ This infraction just will not keep."
There are obviously benefits to Pinback's consistency: If Information Retrieved is your first experience with the San Diegans, it might be your favorite album of theirs. If it isn't, there's a fine distinction between the two ways of reading, "great, more Pinback." As with the most recent Sea and Cake record, there's something inherently nostalgic about Information Retrieved delivering exactly what you'd expect. While it's something of a palliative for people tired of the news cycle surrounding Grimes or Odd Future or whatever, there's also the sense of it being a vestigial remnant of a time when "indie" could imply something more serious and studious, less attention-seeking but often standoffish. As a result, it's a reunion with an old friend, but not necessarily a close one. For half an hour, you think "why don't we do this more often?" until it ends and you remember how frustrating they can be.
