Album Review
If 1990s indie rock is now considered classic rock, Verst’s second album, David Slain, is an instant classic. That’s not to say these are retro recordings — sure, there are hints of Pavement’s penchant for six-string entanglements, but David Slain decidedly dodges slacker musicianship. And yes, frontman John Dickey’s voice sometimes sounds like an intersection of Thurston Moore’s lackadaisical timbre and J. Mascis’s reedy croon, but Dickey has been singing this way since the ’90s with Pie and Richard Bitch. David Slain may be ’90s informed, but it’s not a ’90s retrospective. No disrespect to Sebadoh, but Lou Barlow could never write a song as catchy as “Haleakala.” And while Pixies are godhead, their guitars never sounded as cacophonously gorgeous as those laid to waste on the eight-minute space rock epic “Secret Sea."