Sub Pop has been totally killing lately, and the label debut from Seattle’s A Frames is just one more example of how unimpeachable their taste is. Keeping in the Wolf Eyes/Comets on Fire vein of unmarketable, high-quality noise-rock that Sub Pop snatches up from other labels for no apparent reason, A Frames traffic in a style of weird, retro-futurist racket that’s part Pussy Galore, part Plastic Bertrand and part Pailhead. Although Black Forest occasionally gets a little too wrapped up in its martial clang and no-wave stiffness, it’s still a hell of a record and it definitely deserves the attention that being on Sub Pop will get it.
This article appears in Mar 23-29, 2005.