Here’s a few things about the Seedy Seeds: they know who they are, they’re comfortable in their own skin, and the new album Verb Noun is going to sound however the hell it wants to sound, regardless of whatever chillwave/gravewave/hoaxwavve bullshit Pitchfork is currently BNM shoveling.
The trio out of Cincinnati has made no bones about planting their roots in the wheaty-expanse of golden American Music (in the Violent Femmes sense), offset with the unexpected electronic tinge. On Verb Noun acoustic guitar, banjo, violin abound — an Aaron Copland piece in 4/4 time — but you’ll hear synthesizers and electronic beats as well. When I reviewed the last album, the stellar Count The Days, I adopted the reductive (and somewhat snide) procedure of viewing the LP through the lens of a then-current folk-tronica craze. Was that fair to the Seedy Seeds? What does folk-tronica even mean? A couple of synth beats, banjo, and a mock twang? The Seedy Seeds are anything but hybrid-for-the-sake-of-hybrid, but it took me a second album cycle to realize it.
Verb Noun is no hybrid. The album is a vision of a land beyond genre: wholly American without being Americana. That is to say, an ethnomusicologist from another country would recognize in "Flintlock Fire" winsome rootsy folk; in "Tired Enough to Drive" optimistic powerpop; strains of gospel (or at least Madonna’s "Like A Prayer") in "Nomenclature"; a danceable disco lasererium in "Hey Exponent"; and the classic pop harmonies littered all over the album. All threads that make up the fabric of American music, woven together without the cloying sentiment that the East and West coast have come to fear — fairly or not — from the Heartland.
I had the pleasure to see the Seedy Seeds live in Chicago recently (along with fun & feisty No No Knots). Their performance was as sharp, honest, and unpretentious as their music. Sources report that the band has recently partnered up with the same PR company that handles Robert Plant, so hopefully Verb Noun will find the audience it deserves. Until then I’ll keep praising it up to the heavens, because that’s where it belongs, floating above a western harvest field by moonlight.
Stream the folky "Flintlock Fire"
Stream the robot-infused "Hey Exponent"
Stream the firing-on-all-pistons "Verb Noun"
Catch them via the usual interwebz folderol: Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, their own site — and watch for them at SXSW!
