#RECENTMEMORY // ADEN - Black Cow (TeenBeat, 1999)
By the end of the 1990s, TeenBeat Records, of the then exceptionally great independent music city of Washington, D.C., had developed a distinct set of aesthetics that defined their roster of artists’ look and sound. Consummate indie-pop with crisp, clean production packaged in label-head Mark Robinson’s high-concept, font-nerd cover art, whether you were looking at or listening to a TeenBeat record, you pretty much knew it right away. With the exception of maybe only Robinson’s own band Unrest’s untouchable Perfect Teeth, I don’t think TeenBeat ever released a more perfect album than Aden’s Black Cow from 1999. Originally of the University of Chicago but by then another great D.C. band, Aden was the project of songwriter Jeff Gramm and featured a pre-freak Kevin Barker before the guitar player would become known as a proto-folkie in his Currituck County solo project and as a role player for much hairier acts like Devendra Banhart and Vashti Bunyan on her second-wind run through the mid-00s. But Black Cow existed in a time before beards and its sound is appropriately clean-shaven. The guitars are warm but thin-as-can-be, the drums soft and understated, and Gramm’s vocals, like all indie-kid singers of the period, are hushed and conversational. On subsequent releases, Aden would try to expand their sound to varying degrees of success, but with Black Cow everything is compact and consistent. All very skinny and anti-masculinist, this album sounds like a white kid alone at college and that’s exactly what I was when it was released. If you ever wanted to know what freshman year sounded like, this is it.
Aden - “I Knew You Would Go” from Black Cow (TeenBeat, 1999) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbzNHA33AQc&feature=related
TeenBeat Records http://www.teenbeatrecords.com
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#RECENTMEMORY is a series focused on revisiting records/bands/labels/scenes/stuff of only the relatively recent past. Think late-90s thru yesterday.
