Although it's nigh on a decade since they split, THIN WHITE ROPE don't appear to be any closer to gaining the posthumous respect they deserve. Indeed, as the moss and lichen continues to obscure their recorded legacy, they remain at best on rock's archival fringes, lonely and unloved except by the unshakeable few.
That's a horrendous travesty when you consider that during a prolific spell between 1986 and 1992, TWR honed a sound consistently dark, challenging and instantly recognisable. In fact, with the exception of their tentative debut,"Exploring The Axis" (1986), any of the five full-length albums demand further scrutiny.
Number four of these "SACK FULL OF SILVER" is the one where the TWR twin-cam guitar turbine is shackled to absolute perfection, however. Its' nine songs are thought-provoking, enigmatic vignettes, still capable of rocking like utter bastards, albeit with the disturbing Jekyll'n'Hyde quality inherent in their best work.
Originally released in May 1990 after the band left the Frontier label and succumbed to the charms of RCA, "SACK FULL OF SILVER" as always eschews the sunkissed, harmony-laden values often associated with all things Californian, but then THIN WHITE ROPE hailed from the inland Nowheresville they call Davis and, at least spiritually, had more in common with the desert eclecticism and dustbowl psychedelia of Arizona sons like the MEAT PUPPETS or GIANT SAND.
Benefitting from the sharp production of Tom Mallon (formerly of those other disenfranchised Californians AMERICAN MUSIC CLUB), "SACK FULL OF SILVER" furnishes a fine ensemble performance and shoves THIN WHITE ROPE's secret weapons - Guy Kyser's remarkable voice and the Kyser/ Kunkel guitar face-offs - well and truly to the fore.
Actually, even after years of immersion in THIN WHITE ROPE's sonic ocean,it's a Herculean task to describe Guy Kyser's vocals within rock's regular parameters. At a push, you'd perhaps envisage a bourbon-sozzled Peter Lorre, but even that doesn't truly convey the eerie, cadaverous quality he lends to tracks like "The Napkin Song" or the brooding hoedown of "Whirling Dervish."
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Kyser and Kunkel's guitar blowouts, meanwhile, deserve to be held in the same lofty regard as TELEVISION's legendary Tom Verlaine/ Richard Lloyd duels or the innovation of SONIC YOUTH's Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo. Neither before or since has your correspondent heard such a formidable storm of controlled feedback or dense melodic twists as TWR employ during "Hidden Lands", "Triangle Song" or "Yoo Doo Right" - the latter a cover of a CAN song (from their 1969 debut LP,"Monster Movie") that achieves the impossible by bettering the source material. And bear in mind this is CAN we're talking about, people!
Like all history's greatest bands, THIN WHITE ROPE's antics on tour provided them with material for their finest work. "Triangle Song" is still their greatest achievement and came about as a comment on their 'Hell Tour' of Europe in the winter of 1988, which left the group stranded and broke, existing solely on potatoes in the old Soviet Union, their extended Russian tour dates forcing them to catch the very last plane home to the States for Christmas. Their original (cancelled) seats home would have found them on a certain PAN AM flight that exploded over Lockerbie!
"Triangle Song" captures all the hurt, exhaustion and resignation inherent in that situation in the five most glorious minutes of sadness since the ROLLING STONES' "Moonlight Mile" touched on the same subject from the other end of the rock star spectrum. Nowadays, we can only catch TWR's coruscating live power on the post-split double CD "The One That Got Away", an ace recording of their final gig in Belgium, but we really ought to wipe the mould off their studio canon. Even if it's too late to mourn their passing, at least we should see their grave is kept clean.
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