Spinanes

***CHECK STOCK!!!  Received an 8.5 rating from Pitchfork. 
THE SPINANES were Portland OGs singer-guitarist REBECCA GATES and drummer SCOTT PLOUF, who met via mutual friends and started playing music together a few months before their performance at the legendary International Pop Underground Convention in Olympia, WA, in 1991, and were snapped up by Sub Pop in the post-Nirvana feeding frenzy. Gates was a guitar manipulator more artful and poetic and sensual than her peers, with a voice full of emotion and warmth—a deep, distinct standout among the samey girly-girls. Plouf was a powerhouse drummer, exact and on-point, with a giant collection of shades and enough mod swagger to make Paul Weller proud. Their urgency was soft but they pummeled us hard. Like slightly scruffy, slightly glam thrift-store siblings, the Spinanes came off as smart and serious. When they recorded their debut album, Manos, with BRIAN PAULSON at AmRep in Minneapolis, they brought a ridiculous amount of energy: Few acts manage to capture that live spark in the studio. A college radio hit, Manos was characterized as indiepop or indie rock or “alternative,” but also had a touch of art rock, folk, emo, math rock, postrock, even jazz, nearing the same spiritual space as ’90s bands like Unrest, Sebadoh, and Versus. Named after a misheard Jesus Lizard lyric, Manos is just that: It sounds like smoky venues and dance parties at punk houses: woozy, tight, fraught, wrought, tense, intense, swoony, breathy, fast, worldly/weary—sophisticated and primitive, stressful and soothing. Manos was an original in a crowded market in 1993, and the Spinanes seemed to be everywhere. All hail its reissue, one quarter century later.