Drive My Car
by Sarah Vowell - From the City Pages, March 1, 1995.
IT WAS HARD to determine its most endearing feature. While some friends were partial to the engine, sounding as it did like some sort of perpetual detonation machine, others preferred the malfunctioning heater, which brought us together on many an adolescent winter night. Personally, I was impressed with the way that the bald tires, skating on the Montana ice, turned the brakes into a feature as optional as air conditioning. I still can't/won't drive, thank you very much, but my twin sister could: Dad bought her this, uh, automobile- a '71 Volkswagon Fastback - for $500 when we were sixteen. It swerved, it giggled, it sputtered, it roared, and stepping into it, you never knew if you'd make it back out alive. Keep your sleek Scandinavian safety wagons- they can't compare to the thrill of that Fastback plunging down a frozen hill.
Like their namesake, the Seattle punk-pop band the Fastbacks are all over the road. The unbridled gumption of their sound, their simple but sage lyrics, and the relentless joy of their delivery gang up into quite a sonic hullabaloo. Guitar swashbuckler/songwriter Kurt Bloch, lead singer/bassist Kim Warnick, and vocalist/guitarist Lulu Gargiulo form the group's core trio; an ad for their latest Sub Pop album, Answer the Phone, Dummy, boasted of "no less than six drummers!" Wednesday night's show at the Uptown Bar and Grill will feature former Posies stick-wielder Mike Musburger, whose frenetically brilliant performance in San Francisco last fall- in the throes of a flu delirium- was so astonishing I found myself wishing he'd catch bubonic plague.
While the Fastbacks lunge into their songs with the unjaded freshness of teenage garage rockers, they are in fact 15-year veterans of the Seattle scene. Their reputation as a band's band and their small but dedicated following doesn't make up for the fact that they have been largely ignored on a national level. Eddie Vedder, in a recent Spin magazine interview, seemed almost dumbfounded by the Fastbacks' relative obscurity as he was confused by Pearl Jam's overwhelming fame. I asked Bloch if he was bitter about the commercial success reaped by fellow Seattlites and he just laughed: "Who should I be bitter towards? All the tens of millions of people in the U.S. who haven't bought our records?" Warnick graciously concurs, "We're just happy to be part of everything." Maybe Vedder's jealous, fondly remembering the days when he could have written songs with titles like "Never Heard of Him;" I bet he fantasized about "Back to Nowhere" or (better yet) "Gone to the Moon," too.
Answer the Phone, Dummy is the Fastbacks' poppiest release to date, including the lovely, especially radio-friendly hummer "In the Observatory." Still, if you're looking for perfect pitch, seamless transition, and slick technique, step a couple of letters to the right at the record store and go for Whitney Houston: The Fastbacks' unbashful sloppiness is the root of their charm. Many of their songs, like those of their big brothers the Buzzcocks, clock in at under two minutes and dance on the deserved grave of every 12-minute Santana solo unfortunately known to man.
Bloch is one of rock's best guitar players, but he doesn't get decorative about it, alternately puncturing his songs with drive-by licks and steering them forward in an unwavering vector of mirth. Although sophisticated is usually a code word for no-fun-at-all, the textures of his arrangements are remarkably animated. For instance, "On the Wall"'s pretty bridge, so reminiscent of Mozart's intricacies I could imagine its clavichord incarnation, is abruptly invaded by the band's 20th century blast.
If the Fastbacks' sound oozes full-blown, communal assurance, Bloch's lyrics speak of uneasy solitude, finding the singer alone in many, if not the same small room(s). They speak unspoken thoughts ("You don't know what you mean to me and I'll never let you know") and flirt with giving up ("Do you ever think what it's like to be dead?"). But the weary intelligence that compels anyone engaged in the examined life to ask the question "why bother?" gives way in these songs to the resounding, messy yes of persistence that screams- as in "They Don't Care"- "I will walk as far as I have to."
But you can save the psychological analyses for home listening; the Fastbacks' live shows heavily slant to sheer good-humored, raw clamor. Plus, they're fun to watch: Warnick's striking physicality contrasts with her girlish voice, making her sound like she just skinned her knee sliding into a playground home base in a could of dusty laughter. And Gargiulo's searchlight smile illuminates Bloch's flight path- always jumping, he makes more daily take-offs than all the pilots at O'Hare combined. But don't take my (admittedly gaga) word for it: Go to the show, dummy.
