Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #98176 in Digital Music Album
• Released on: 1994-04-04
• Running time: 0 seconds

Customer Reviews

A Masterpiece of the School of Loud and Quiet
This album changed my view of music forever. Before I understood nothing of patience with music, of letting a theme develop, of any song structure that was different from verse-chorus-verse...but the day I made this purchase was a fateful one indeed. Throughout its forty-two minute duration, the band members and producer Bob Weston craft unimagined soundscapes, pull meditative melodies from spare arrangements, assault the senses with aggressiveness unknown to any type of rock music, and create an air of haunting mystery that can only leave the listener addicted. It happened to me, people.

All of the songs stand alone themselves..."Bible Silver Corner" is the plaintive opening instrumental, deceptively introducing a mood that is both comforting and disturbing at the same time..."The Everyday World of Bodies" is Rodan's epic signature tune, with it's army of vocalists weaving together a mysterious story of love, betrayal, life, and death..."Gauge" is, in my opinion, one of the greatest rock songs ever written...the song manages to go everywhere in seven minutes but maintain a cohesiveness and pensive beauty throughout.

However, the thing you notice most on first listen will be the overall unity of the album. Weston aided the band in bringing these songs together as one...the track order coupled with the brilliant use of feedback ties the songs together into one work of art rather than several.

If you are a fan of any type of music with an experimental edge (especially those of an indie vein), you don't know the first of it until you get your hands on this album. Solid yet trippy drumming, fractured yet intricate guitars, pummeling yet melodious bass-playing, and the combined effort of three excellent vocalists make this album one of a kind. Ten stars, baby.

Early 90s Louisville rock sculpted in full relief...
Rodan's Rusty is, simply put, one of the most beautiful and jarring records I have ever heard. Fusing the atmospheric spoken word meditations of Slint's Spiderland with a very primal sort of anger that Slint only sometimes broached, Rusty tears into the listener and forces them to bend to its will. The album starts off inoccuously enough with the almost neoclassical "Bible Silver Corner." However, after 7 minutes of pretty guitars, all bets are off: the record careens into high gear with a blindsiding transition into "Shiner" and rarely lets up from that point on. Every song following the two opening tracks seems to feed off their contradictory sensibilities - pretty guitar/bass riffs and softly spoken poetry continually crash into muscular math-rock riffing and sincere, anguished yells. "The Everyday World of Bodies" tells a poignant tale of first [love]with sensitivity and confusion and disquieting feeling; "Jungle Jim" and "Gauge" merge anthemic guitar work with contorted song structures. The band's three singers sing with the desperate honesty of people who have nothing to lose. Guitarist Jeff Mueller's lines have a sort of tension and release - his screams of "Shoot me out the sky!" and "I will be there, I SWEAR!" in "Shiner" and "Bodies," respectively, are some of the most cathartic vocal takes ever put to tape. Tara Jane O'Neil also consistently penetrates the listener with her deep, dreamlike singing on "Jungle Jim" and "Tooth Fairy Retribution Manifesto." There's really too much to say about this record to accurately and thoroughly account for in an Amazon.com record review, but suffice to say that Rusty gets under your skin.

like fine wine
unforgivably, i turned down the opportunity to see Rodan live in order to do something that i can't even remember. only after the band broke up did i come to believe that Rusty is perhaps one of the best indie albums ever. Rodan's only album contains some of the best elements of music from Louisville . . . moody, angular, energetic and melancholic. tara jane o'neil, jason noble, jeff meuller and kevin coultas make up the foursome. each member has since branched off to join other reputable bands such as: June of '44, Rachel's, TJO, the Sonora Pine and Shipping News.

highlights of Rusty include "Toothfairy Retribution Manifesto", "Gauge" and "Bible Silver Corner". i actually like this album better than both of the Slint full-lengths. all of the members of the band are in this really bad movie filmed in Louisville and Chatanooga called "Half-Cocked", which you can order from a nameless indie label. if you get burned-out on this album, Jeff Meuller and Jason Noble reunite along with Kevin Crabtree to form The Shipping News. they are worth checking out.