When I was a teenager one of the biggest thrills for me was listening to Atlanta-based college radio stations like WREK and WRAS (which was always a little more “pro” than WREK but not nearly as much as it is now.) I would listen intently with a blank cassette in the stereo and just record hours of radio broadcasts and listen carefully for the DJ to back-announce the records. Then I would make lists of what I liked and take it to the record store with me. A lot of times getting my hands on a record I wanted was a weeks-long process. This activity and method of finding bands, I discovered later, was pretty common among fans my age across the country. The thing was, though, that this happened with such a degree of isolation that each record, if it lived up to my expectation, became a private treasure. Such was the extent of cultural-separateness (well, really, only before I had a driving license) that I was actually mildly shocked when I got to see Husker Du (at age 15, no less) and they played to a packed house. Sure, I knew other people knew of them (hell, I had discovered them on college radio where they were already gods and they were on freakin’ Warner Bros. by that time…) but I had internalized their music to such a degree that they felt like my own.

All of which is to say that Austin, TX band The Gary sent me into a memory warp a few weeks ago when I started playing its EP Chub regularly (although I’ve still never gotten used to a seven-track record being called an EP. That’s long enough for an album, if it’s good, for me anyway. But I digress…)

The trios sparse, pure sound, which is at once timeless yet distinctively American-indie, is supported by its lyrics which are easily among the best I’ve heard in a while. Weirdly enough my favorite track on the record is one of the same ones the promotion company handling the record highlighted for attention (which would be a great jumping off point concerning the ironies of my speaking the gospel of this record being a possible second-act to my teenage fantasy world described above, while ignoring the fact that I would likely have never heard it unless it was mailed to me by a company seeking the very publicity I’m giving it. Yes, that’d be a good point to make, and I think I’d like to, but not right now.)

That almost never happens.

I’ve played this record, easily, 25 times through. I don’t even think I’ve ever played a frickin’ Beatles record that many times. It won’t change your life, and I don’t expect it to change mine, but it has informed the past few weeks. And, maybe, since that’s the case, it did change something. I dunno. I just know that this is the first record I’ve gotten from out of nowhere in a long time that actually made me feel something. Hell, it inspired the first major writing here at 24HPP in several weeks so that’s gotta mean something, right? Yeah, ok, well…

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Although the whole record speaks, not to disillusionment exactly, but to a clear vision of a devastated cultural/industrial landscape, it’s really on “Damn Machines” that The Gary makes its point. The entire lyrics are:

You can have your damn machines

The thud, clunk, bump and repetition

The sick-somber mood, the fallout and hypnosis

Damn machines pounding out death rhythms

The long commute, the worry and reluctance

The morning sun a nuisance from above

It exists for a higher thing

Not to facilitate the grind of damn machines

When bassist/vocalist Dave Norwood spits out “You can have your damn machines” it sometimes sounds like he’s saying “You can have your damaging.”

Which, in the end, I imagine he is.

MP3: The Gary-Damn Machines