Thin White Rope

During live performances, Thin White Rope seemed to derive a perverse pleasure from launching into obscure, unpredictable covers ranging from Bob Dylan to Hawkwind, Can, and the Poster Children. That tendency revealed how far afield the band's influences were. Somehow they brought them all together to create their own unsettling brand of sound. Melodic lines merged with raspy atonalities in a complex mesh of guitars, which at first disturbs, but eventually emerges as numinous and somehow sublime. Meanwhile, vocalist and lead songwriter Guy Kyser penned lyrics that recall Hank Williams in their corrosive bitterness and existential despair. These wolfish elements were attired in a sheep's clothing of cleanly produced pop. Like their spiritual descendents the American Music Club, Thin White Rope drew listeners in with a friendly, generally upbeat facade, only to rob them in the end of happiness and hope. Until disbanding in 1992, they were the demolition experts of the soul; they destroyed so that people might rebuild.