HIGH BIAS -- reissues

High Bias refreshed

SHOULD
A Folding Sieve
(Words On Music)
Should is known, if at all, for a cover of an 18th Dye song ("Merger") which so impressed that band that it included it on its own rarities compilation. But the Austin-to-Pennsylvania trio has been quietly releasing shimmeringly beautiful, lo-fi dreampop records since 1995. A Folding Sieve combines the band's initial seven-song EP with "Merger," a couple of tracks from a 45 and a handful of unreleased tunes. Brothers Eric and Marc Ostermeier and Tanya Maus use insistent but subdued rhythms, cooed vocal interplay and effects-laden guitars to create mini-masterpieces of lush, gliding pop. Marvelously realized tracks like "Pulling," "Breathe Salt" and "Faded" float confidently out of the ether and into the real world, their gauzy instrumentation brandishing just enough substance to be tactile as well as ephemeral. The muscular guitars of "Soothed" and the pop backbone of "Own Two Feet" (borrowed from New Zealand pop icon Jean Paul Sartre Experience) indicate that there's more to the band than making pretty noises, not that there's anything wrong with that. Should is simply one of the best bands at this style currently in practice, and A Folding Sieve will satisfy the beautiful noise jones better than anything outside of cranking the Carpenters past the point of pain. Michael Toland

For fans of: Half-String, Springhouse, Cocteau Twins

THIRDIMENSION
Protect Us From What We Want
(Telegram/Hidden Agenda)
This full-bodied Swedish quartet garnered quite a few comparisons to The Soundtrack of Our Lives when Protect Us From What We Want was first released in 1998. The two groups do share certain proclivities towards 60s psychedelia, 70s proto-arena rock and big, fat hooks. But despite more than its share of elements familiar to TSOOL fans, Thirdimension has its own distinctive style of psychedelic pop-rock, with a little more aggression, a little less agility and quite a bit less polish. (Though frontman Franz Stegmann seems to have the same vocal coach as TSOOL's Ebbot Lundberg.) None of those things are in and of themselves bad, of course; it all comes down less to sound than to songs anyway. And 3D has those in abundance. The rough-and-tumble opening track "If This World Could Only See" gets the album off to a shaky start, but the group rights itself with the amazing 1-2-3-Fah! punch of "This Time," "Never in a Lifetime," "Other Side of Town" and "E-Variations," a wonderful string of melodic rockers that will put a grin on the face of the most cynical music fan. The pretty acoustic pop of "My Time is Now" and the shiny psychedelic ballad "The Games You Play" constitute a well-placed break in the action before the band brings back the rock with "Lonely Road." The final three numbers— the trippy psych/popper "Until It Breaks," the widescreen anthem "Yes Equals No" and the acoustic pop tune "Over"—maintain the high quality level begun on track two. It's hard to imagine that Protect Us From What We Want is a debut record; it sounds too confident and assured to be a beginning, and it makes one yearn to hear how Thirdimension has progressed. Once again, Sweden has flung forth another brilliant band that Americans will be catching on to a few years late. Michael Toland [buy it]

For fans of: the Boo Radleys, Super Furry Animals, Rockfour