Answer the Phone, Dummy (Sub Pop)
by Eric Weisbard - From Spin Magazine.
By now it's a formula. Kurt Bloch bounces everybody around with growly little power-pop chords, pausing now and again to show off some new trick he has acquired. (Check out the jazz coda of "Trumpets Are Loud." Has Bloch been listening to Charlie Christian or something?) Imported drummers- borrowed, on different songs here, from Flop, Love Battery, and Mudhoney- supply the requisite batch of hyperactive fills. And then Kim Warnick and Lulu Gargiulo commence to testify, weaving around the melody in ways that surely wouldn't fly with a state trooper.
Typically, power pop is a boy singing about how he'll burst if he doesn't get the girl over this sort of musical backing. Fastbacks decenter the tradition by introducing female voices, which in 1994 can sustain the aura of universality power pop requires in ways males can't. Also, Bloch's lyrics have always been more about trying to hold on to meaning than clutching at some honey. "I'm dying to leave the party in my head, " Warnick and Gargiulo sing for him. Slacker inertia- "I'll stay away from work again today and think of all the records that I want to play"- isn't irritating here, it's wrenching, because the style in which Fastbacks play was designed to allow rockers to wallow in emotions they'd otherwise deadpan.
Fastbacks get name-dropped a lot by Eddie Vedder types; they're a purer conception of rock than grunge, equally bound to the past but far lighter about carrying the load. "In the Observatory" steals its lift from Boston's "More Than a Feeling." "Back to Nowhere" revisits '60s disco melodies that Saint Etienne fans will recognize. "Went For a Swim" interrupts straight punk clamour for some singularly inappropriate arpeggios. Assimilating anything that strikes their fancy without need of irony, Fastbacks seem that much more generous, unpretentiously inclusive in another great Northwest tradition dating back to garage kinds such as the Sonics.
So yeah, it's a formula, and Answer the Phone, Dummy stands out in Fastbacks' catalog as the place where they start reveling in that fact. If you're up to date, you'll probably find the new album the band's most consistent since Very, Very Powerful Motor and its biggest sounding ever. Newcomers are invited to discover Seattle rock that is closer to the touristy-but-still funky Pike Place Market than Sub Pop's typical lineup of amplified Mount Rainiers. (1932 First Avenue, Suite 1103, Seattle, WA 98101).
by Cyndi Elliott - from Alternative Press
Hooray! Another Fastbacks record! Greet Answer the Phone, Dummy with a smile in your heart because when the Fastbacks make their seventh or so full-length in fourteen or so years, it's with more enthusiasm than Jagger reading a Teleprompter. Yes, Fastbacks are from Seattle. And they were from there before you ever got toilet-trained.
Fastbacks' punk 'n' pop timelessness keeps them fresh yet still tragically obscure. Songwriter Kurt Bloch of the Young Fresh Fellows never seems to run out of revved-up mammoth chords and riffs to keep guitarist Lulu Garguilo (sic) and bassist Kim Warnick a-beltin' his songs of melancholy and purity with cooing, wooing childlike sincerity and grown-up authority. Answer is a solid rock of a record, worth buying for songs like "On Your Hands" and "Old Address of the Unknown" alone. Crammed fifteen songs tight with more hooks than the only muskie left in Lake Michigan, Fastbacks' distorted girl-group appeal will make even the most jaded heart swim in endorphins, and the sober simplicity of the lyrics, well... "I'll spend the next ten thousand light years at home, I'll stay away from work again today, and think of all the records that I wanna play..."
All Fastbacks records, of course.
If you can deny the strength of this record, call your nearest mortuary. You're late for your own funeral, pal.
by Sandy Masuo - From Option
Boldly confronting the forces of darkness creeping over the face of the music world, Seattle's Fastbacks continue to churn out a theraputic blend of sweetness, light and really loud guitars. Like their elder brethren the Ramones, the Fastbacks play songs that are pure and easy; Kim (bass, vocals) and Lulu (guitar, vocals) trace lazy melodic figures over the clean-burning punk pop energy field they generate with Kurt (guitar, etc.) and a slew of guest drummers from the Posies, Mudhoney, Love Battery, Flop and others. Their sentiments are deceptively simple- walls, swimming pools and beaches become metaphors at the turn of a phrase, and the trio wittily cuts to the quick of modern life and its travails. "Waste of Time" tackles slackerdom with its own irony ("And so they all cried 'apathy' and no one cared at all"). In "And You" they punctuate their take on cynicism with a lilting "wee ooh wee ooh" that blissfully thumbs its nose at the guilty party. And love may be a many-splendored thing, but the Fastbacks only need 37 words to sum it up: "I've not done anything at all since I last saw you/And I haven't had a thing to eat for a day or two/I found the star that led me to the planet where you are." Ain't life grand?
