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NPI is a unique statement not matched anywhere...

Bradley Leland | 03/25/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I was driving around with some friends of mine sometime around 96 or 97 and listening to pavement's slanted and enchanted, which provoked one of my riders, an odd punk rock traveling type of guy, to say "Do you like Indie rock?". "sure, I guess" - not really knowing the scope of such a term. So he pulled out a beaten up blank tape with UNWOUND - NPI written on it and put it in the tape deck. What came out of the speakers changed the way I saw loud music forever and sent me on a 4 year hunt through the 'underground' in search of another 'NPI' (which I never found).

The music on this album defies all prior musical tradition. It's loud but not aggressive, dark but not angry, emotional but not mopey or sad. The sound is absolutely massive and Justin's feedback squalls and tense yelling/singing are all over the place, but it all somehow evokes a sort of emotional comfort that is both sad and desparate and hopeful and yearning all at once. I read (possibly in a review on the MKultra site) that this was soundtrack music for an apocalypse. In fact, after quietly stealing my friends tape and listening to it for 6 months on a daily basis, it became like an apocalypse - for all the music I used to listen to. This album stands today as my "high water mark" among the countless genius records I heard in my previously mentioned search for an equal to NPI. It would surely be, even for those who did not feel the same life changing effect, considered one of the better indie rock albums of the 90's. I cannot say enough how much I think this album should be heard."

The best Unwound album

Bradley Leland | 09/18/1998

(5 out of 5 stars)

"All of Unwound's albums are good; for consistency alone, they are one of the finest bands around. This is their finest hour -- 9 songs that are, on average, more quiet than normal for Unwound. This is not to say that this is atypical Unwound; just prettier, in general, as well as more brutal (no, this is not a contradiction) and more well thought-out than 99.9% of the bands out there."