Pinback

I saw a good band in downtown Oakland yesterday--Pinback. Check them out if you get a chance. How would I describe their sound?: Well, it might be easier to say that they drew the kind of crowd you might have found at a Wilco show back before their Yankee Foxtrot Hotel CD came out and attracted mainstream buzz. These were the understated but attractive, upwardly mobile, college-age stoner types with an intellectual/artistic backbone. One guy standing in front of me had a little tattered over-the-shoulder bag with a Haruki Murakami paperback tucked neatly inside it. You get the idea. Each song sounded better and better. I'm not technically a music critic, so I'm having a hard time defining their music. It reminded me slightly of The Minutemen if they had gone on to combine their punk tendencies with a melodic keyboard and vocal harmonies. Does that even seem possible? I know--it's hard to picture until you see and hear it. I will have to check out their CDs. They had the right attitude of "we're just here doing our thing." They weren't trying too hard to please, plus they had a rare originality that you have to appreciate. They didn't feel too derivative of anybody else or any other scene.

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