Consumer Guide Album

Dumptruck: D Is for Dumptruck [Incas, 1984]
These smart young depressives not only work their variation on the garage-guitar Amerindie vernacular, they make it signify: the sludgy stasis of the rhythms and offhand density of the textures reinforce ruminative, overheard lyrical commonplaces. Their commitment and concentration are the best argument for pop formalism since the Shoes, and if one key difference is that they never try to be tuneful, another is that they never try to be cute. Instead, they get so into being down they convince you it's interesting. A-