Pitchfork

You know the Bible story about Lazarus? Not the one where he becomes one of the first zombies, but the indecipherable parable that Jesus tells to piss off the Pharisees, about the rich guy who gives the beggar Lazarus his table scraps, and later the rich guy torments in fire while Lazarus goes to an afterlife cafeteria/lounge? Well, see, Pinback are the rich man (hey, their last album title referenced spending a hot season in a biblical-Jerusalem garbage dump synonymous with hell), and Lazarus represents Pinback fans, who will likely be paradisaically/purgatorially happy to feast on these surprisingly substantial scraps.

How low were the stakes for this back-in-the-day leftovers comp? Pinback have warned in publicity interviews that many of these tracks are "half-done" and that they "fell through the cracks" of lowly tour EPs. Yet the sound of early Pinback-- anemic grooves and clockwork beauty-- is so cohesive that Nautical Antiques avoids seeming scattershot. Of course, six of these tracks are even titled in the globetrotting-but-Eurocentric world-history mode of the band's self-titled 1999 album ("Versailles", "Clemenceau", etc.). Such proper-nouning was presumably an artistic choice and not an attempt at savvy marketing for extended European releases, but it does seem like a fancy allusive smokescreen for what always appeared to be a pretty idealess band with a great sound/formula and fans who love the indie aesthetic that Pinback often encapsulates with era-specific dignity.

For example, several of these tracks feature spindly guitars over too-simply processed or programmed-sounding drums, whether or not they're actually being performed by Tom Zinser-- the demo of "Seville" is a fetching, white-funk riff played over one of the most overused breakbeat samples of the 1990s. Though this comp's offerings are dated, they're on par with (if not more musically interesting than) the best of the Folk Implosion's similar efforts, and way better than fin de siecle Primitive Radio God percussion-loop forays by alt-mainstays from Butthole Surfers to They Might Be Giants.

None of the Pringle-snap of recent Pinback is on display here; this comp is mostly about fructifying the lope and the plod. "Avignon" seems to tear the roof off the sucker by merely implying that it was crafted by beings with metabolism. That track is one of two fine piano-based dalliances included that alarmingly reveal Rob Crow to have been some kind of proto-Sufjan. (And lo, NPR loved them some Pinback in 2001.) Man, this guy can do palatable well, and then he can still go nuts as Goblin Cock.

Nautical Antiques works both as a nostalgic springboard to the misty days of Milemarker and Versus, and as a relic of the nerdy, secular sexlessness of so much pre-9/11 post-punk. This version of Pinback was the opposite of Modest Mouse off-the-rails-ness; they made sober concentration-music at stoner-rock tempos, as if scoring a debate between Adderall and codeine. The soothing vocals hot up the mathiness, proving that an act can be calculatedly flaccid, yet seductive.