Unwound - New Plastic Ideas

March 21st, 1994.

Kill Rock Stars

New Plastic Ideas, Unwound's second studio album, turns 30. Angst-riddled and energetic, energy with nowhere else to go but back in on itself. A self-fulfilling circle of apprehensive rumination, ruination. 

Unwound, with their signature angular sound, prickle the heart-strings through utterly dissonant means. No other band had/has the ability to play the range from heartfelt to animalistically abrasive; often times at the same time, in tandem. Ripped apart by the need for connection but the waning want to be left alone sticks, like glue. 

Dissonance finds something akin to melody to live through. The sounds of what can only be described as a bird that's realised that life is a lie opens New Plastic Ideas - choked of all its natural flare, the bird comes to. Eyes wide and unwanting; wanting to undo this misfortune and go back to sleep, forever. Sharp, caustic stabs of guitar split the atom as New Plastic Ideas bursts to life - 'Entirely Different Matters' leads the way. 

Center-piece 'Abstraktions' somewhat soothes out the jagged corners of New Plastic Ideas; an extended and gothic-y 7-minute ship sets sail. 'All Souls Day' does wait up ahead to set the storm in motion once more, however. Waves of sonic sandpaper cascade and crash on shore. Shrieking guitar tones splinter waywards. 

Bruised. Let down and fucked around. Turned inside-out. Beaten about. It's another day down the drain. They just roll one into another and another - a tumbleweed of disappointment. The feeling of running out of road looms large. Up the street, around the corner, and around the subsequent bend; the finish line in sight - though the finish is far from here. It just keeps going. On. And on. And on. 

'Hex on you, what a shame.'