Joseph Martin | Baltimore, MD United States | 01/13/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Leaves Turn Inside You is a classic record. it's classic like Loveless is classic, like Spiderland is classic, and like Remain in Light is classic. Leaves is MY generation's "underappreciated masterpiece" and unwound's Daydream Nation, a beautiful, warm, and disconcerting record that flies in the face of the whatever indie rock has become in the late 20th century/early 21st century. it's unique while still drawing from easily recognizable influences and the band's other records. it sounds everything and nothing like unwound is supposed to sound simply by suggesting that unwound, as a band, can sound any way they want. this is easily my favorite record of this century so far..."
Unwound expands their sound brilliantly
Michael V Halekakis | Seattle, WA United States | 05/11/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I'm another longtime Unwound fan, having owned and worn out each of their six previous releases. I picked up Leaves Turn Inside You expecting more of the same - dirty yet melodic post-punk rock. Admittedly it's a sound I'm less excited about these days, and although I've loved Unwound in the past, I really only expected to get about three good listens out this bad boy before filing it away. As has been said though, this isn't the classic Unwound I'd come to know and love, and that's really all for the better. I feel that in as much as I've changed as a listener, they've changed as a band. I'm currently up to about 12 listens, with no plans to take this out of the player anytime soon.The band has managed to take their already strong songwriting capabilities to new heights by using the studio (built from the ground up, as another reviewer pointed out) as a creative tool. The resulting recording is a decidedly mellower work, yet one that's increased the band's depth a hundred fold. This is a double album in the classic sense: It's epic, it's varied, it demands multiple listens, and it challenges the listener with a wide array of sounds and styles.With that I'd just like to add my voice to the fold: Stellar work, Unwound!"
I'm told I'd had my obligations
S. R Robertson | Oh Henry? | 04/08/2004
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Beautiful and breathtaking. I'm new to Unwound, so maybe their other material was better as Mr. One Star-RAting Narrow-Minded Man stated, but this is pretty friggin' good and incredibly spaced out. Easily stands up to the releases in the post-rock vein, or atleast experimental rock, since it's really hard to explain. I read somewhere that they were influenced by 60's psychadelia (espescially in production, in particular vocal production, which is appareant) and 70's karutrock/art rock just as much as they were arty post-punk and shoegazer.
In other words, try imagining Slint, Sonic Youth, Fugazi, King Chrimson, Brian Eno, and some 60's band all put together in a room and asked to behave. In other other words, just listen to it, cause I'm an amateur musicologist and don't really know what I'm talking about, but hey, I'm trying.
But anywho, combine all those influences into precise, concise, pop song structures and you have an amzing album. All the parts flow seamlessly, ranging from shorter and to-the-point peices like "December" and "Scarlette" to epic masterstrokes like "Terminus" and "Below THe Salt". Lyrically, the songs seem to be abstract poetic takes on relationships, although they tend to venture into ambigous and confused realms. They simultaneously seem to take on existenstial, maybe even nihilstic, emotions ("Don't lie to summarize the truth in place of life/Create a world to house your love" from "Below THe Salt"). Also, Pitchfork recommends this to people who like to dabble a bit in the cough syrup, if you know what I'm getting at (haha...ugh. I hate myself)."
Unwound's Epitaph
michael kozart | 12/09/2002
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I have but one great regret in life so far: Having been witness to Unwound's live sonic fury some seven times before, I chose to see Television play their "historic" reunion set at the 2002 All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Los Angeles--a set that coincided with Unwound's. If I had only known at the time that that Unwound show on March 16 would be the band's second to last, before their break-up announcement on April 1st, (which I swore at the time must be a bad April fool's joke), I would have forsaken Television without a moment's notice. Not that the Television show was a disappointment. Hearing "Marquee Moon" played live was like traveling back in time, back to the late 1970s, a time I must adore if for any reason other than the fact that we were all digging our ultra liberal peanut growing tree hugging President. So where am I in this review? I'm trying to live in the present but I keep slipping into the past to avoid the awful truth: Unwound is with us no more. I have searched and searched for a worthy replacement, but no band seems to stretch the medium of sound and emotion so completely, striking chords of alienation and sadness. Leaves is the culimination of Unwound's decade long quest to discover the perfect aural accompanyment to existential angst, yet differentiating itself from the band's five previous studio albums (each of which I must also rate with five stars), Leaves turns the corner from anger to resignment, restless motion to mature contemplation, a testament to the band entering the mature phase of its own growth. I have no single favorite song on this album. Each of the tracks seems to be perfectly crafted, organic in shaping, and being shaped by, all the other tracks on the album, though if I had to pick a stand-out, it would be RadioGra, the instrumental fifth song on the second disk, which opens up with "radio show" theme music played as a backdrop to a dialogue(is it in German?), which all sounds as if it were broadcast from a dusty vacuum tube radio from the 1940s. The lush mellotron driven harmonies evoke so much beauty and sadness. So much nostalgia. Autumnal change is the mood that pervades the entire album, and it "leaves" me thinking that this young band was simply too young to die. Leaves turn and then fall, but they grow back, don't they? And the tree they grow from gets older, spreading its branches further--doesn't it? I can only think that this great band, like the great old growth forests of the Northwest, should keep living forever, and that Unwound's early demise reflects the desperation of this age that we live in, where nothing seems to last for long, and the world is being choked by corporate greed and pollution and politicians without vision. Where is my Unwound?"