Unwound at Fever, May 7th 2025

 

In the nineties, when rock was king, according to some, the biggest band of them all hailed from Washington State. No, it wasn’t Unwound. It was another one we all know that to this day has its nameprinted on t-shirts worn by people whose parents might not even had been born when they were active. Seattle, Olympia, Aberdeen, Tacoma, that whole area shaped popular music in that era, modern culture even, to an extent, Unwound operated within that space and were able to stand out among the bunch. They were quite possibly among the most experimental and interesting groups that came out of that scene.                         

Their first recordings definitely were grounded on grunge and its post-punk emo offspring, but soon they developed their own sound embracing electronic influences and a more ethereal approach to their music. By their last album, Leaves Turn Inside You, they sounded like a completely different band, compared to their first. Like with The Beatles, it was an eight year trip that in retrospective is fascinating to explore through their seven full lengths.

The last time they visited Japan was in 1998. This time they played six shows in a few cities. I went to the first one dedicated to their second album, New Plastic Ideas. It was at a small venue in Shimokitazawa that used to be a supermarket, Fever. The last time I went there was before I had this blog, back in 2016. I saw Boris performing their album Pink there.

I knew about the show after it was sold out. I contacted the organizers 7 e.p. via email inquiring if there was a chance of more tickets being released. They kindly replied quickly and told me there were some cancellations and they could put me on the list of people buying  tickets at the door. I got there and got no problems getting my ticket. Thank you 7 e.p!

The opening band was the perfect opener for this kind of show. A duo of a masked guitar-vocalist and a drummer who played standing. Their first song was kind of a rockabilly number with distorted vocals. Each song after that sounded different from the previous one, at times prog, at times post-punk. Their quirkiness reminded me of The Residents. The name of the band was Kirihito and I was glad to have discovered them at the show. They have a long history too.

No long after, unceremoniously, Unwound took the stage. OG members Justin Trosper and Sara Lund were joined by Jared Warren on bass, who replaced the late Vern Rumsey and Scott Seckington on second guitar. They opened with Entirely Different Matters, the first song of their second album, and proceeded to play the album in its entirety in order. There was a brief interruption due to a bass amp mishap after this first song, but after a few minutes they were able to fix it and the show continued.

It twas great to hear stuff like Envelope live and how they stretched some of their songs. In my opinion they really hit their stride around halfway through it. The second half sounded way tighter with added flourishes that expanded from what was on the record. At the end of Fiction Friction Sara Lund addressed the audience from behind her drum kit and explained that they just played New Plastic Ideas in its entirety and that they were now going to play songs from their singles compilation A Single History. She added that we might be the last crowd to hear those songs played live, to what Justin Trosper replied “take that as you will”. Maybe because of the above statement this was my favorite part of the show, with the band embodying and flawlessly expressing the energy and impetus of that era through these singles-only songs.

They ended the show with the tune that closes their Repetition album, For Your Entertainment and left the stage with the traditional wall of feedback of guitars leaning on amps while each member of the group threw flowers -that decorated the front of the stage- to the audience. I went to the back of the venue and stroke conversation with three guys around my age. We talked about Jared Warren’s former band Karp and the meaning behind that acronym. We also talked about Merzbow. It was a fun show to catch.
 
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