By Chris Brunelle

The influence of the 90s is still going strong with Tall Firs. These guys make me think of the last few Pavement records, if Malkmus stuck with the guitar and let his friend Thurston take over the vocal duties. The band is made up of indie rock fans and, as you’ll notice at most indie rock shows, those kind of people are mellow to the point of being boring. That is the big difference between Tall Firs and their influences: Those indie forefathers were brash, adventurous, ridiculous, nonsensical and irreverent both lyrically and sonically. The guys in Tall Firs don’t sound happy, sad, pissed off, elated, excited, suspicious, confused or anything else. They’re singing about stuff.

A lot of “cool” musicians feign apathy, but these guys really seem to feel it. Even when Too Old to Die Young swells and and the music raises in intensity I feel so politely rocked. It’s an oxymoronic experience and I’m thus left in the middle pretty unaffected. I guess there’s logic to all this. They’re a group of guys spawned from Generation X in the romanticized sense: a group of lost souls that don’t know what to rebel against.