eMusic Review
Any major-label debut from a band long signed to indie stalwarts Dischord was bound to raise eyebrows; Shudder to Think arched them sky-high with 1994's Pony Express Record. Coming-out parties have rarely sounded stranger than this, between the band's sidewinding, chromatic changes and singer Craig Wedren's unironic operatics; the package pulled together cock rock, prog and post-hardcore in ways at once shocking and beautiful, like some weird middle ground between Faith No More and Gastr Del Sol.
The D.C. band had to know that the album would be scrutinized under an indie-rock microscope: this was, after all, the era of Steve Albini's infamous "The Truth About Major Labels" article, which established the underground party-line for a generation to come. (Lest there be any confusion about things, the cover of the issue of Maximum Rock'n'Roll in which it was published featured a young punk sticking a handgun in his own mouth.) Pony Express Record, accordingly, almost trips over itself in its race to distance itself from the hardcore scene. It's not just Wedren's ambiguously gendered wails or the band's garish songwriting, which seems to marry the spookiest elements of old-timey carnival music to the swaggering hard rock actual carnies… read more »
