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Pinback - London, Upstairs at the Garage Saturday 9th September 2000 Firstly, let me tell you a bit about Rob Crow - if you already know about him then you should skip this part. Rob is a bona-fide musical genius, you should really check out mostly everything he has been involved in. This includes the bands Heavy Vegetable, Thingy, Optiginally Yours and now Pinback. The reason I say he is a genius is; he manages to write amazingly affecting US-style indie-rock, whilst avoiding all the clichés of that genre, like a breath of fresh air blowing through a dusty old corridor. Utilizing great male/female vocal harmonies (but not in a 60's/retro way) and sometimes breathlessly fast and complex arrangements, played with great gusto (but not in a 'prog/math' way) and overall a real mish mash of strong melodies, real singalong stuff unburdened by lo-fi pretensions. There - lesson over, now go buy his shit... Pinback are an extension of Rob's songwriting, but it's not all down to him. The band was formed in early '98 as a part time recording collaboration with Zach Smith from the band Three Mile Pilot, they wrote 14 songs together on Zach's computer set-up and were picked up by a record company and put out as the 'This Is A Pinback CD', and the 'Loro' single, it's great, go buy it, if you haven't already. I'm pretty sure this is the first time that Rob has played this country, I could be wrong, but he's been touring Britain for the past few days and is not impressed with the turnouts mostly, Brighton being a bit of a low apparently. But the surprise registering on Zach's face as lots of happy punters cheerfully sing along to the tracks lets us know that everything's going to be swinging. With an additional drummer and keyboard player the songs are slightly more rock-y than on the record, but this only adds to atmosphere. Rob is having trouble hearing his voice in the monitors (welcome to Upstairs at the Garage, Rob) but he doesn't seem to care, they look at home and like they're having a good time. Zach plays his bass like a guitar, lot's of strumming chords it lightens the sound of the songs a lot, keeping that sweet melodious feeling of the album, Rob is wearing what looks like a 'Mayhem' T-Shirt and a woolly hat, he plays deceptively simple guitar melodies and sings with Zach, their voices mix really well together, even better than the album maybe. Highlights are the audience singing along to the 'Dit Dit Dit' backing vocals on 'Loro', and Rob's embarrassed explanation of why they're so dumb. It's over all to soon, nearly all the songs we know and some we have yet to hear are played, we shout for more and get it. It's stiflingly hot in the venue and afterwards everyone is milling about, there are people over all the way from Dublin to see this gig, people are chatting with Rob afterwards where he has set up a stall selling some Pinback and solo merch, I find myself begging him to come back with Thingy and play. Everyone reluctantly leaves as the typically heavy-handed security guys and gals scream at us to move on, so we say goodbye and wander out into the North London night-time. Santa Dog

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