Vern Rumsey (Unwound) RIP

[Gregory Torso]

Not sure if there are any Unwound fans here, but they were one of my all time favourite bands when I was a teenage tear-jerk. When I was about 16, I bought "Fake Train" on a whim and a prayer and a scribbled 'sounds like Drive Like Jehu![nb]It doesn't, at all[nb]and I don't mean that in a disparaging way[/nb][/nb]' sticker on the album cover, and that was that, L-U-V.

Seems to be suggestions it was suicide.

Honestly, the last couple of years can fuck the fuck off.

In celebration, some favourites

Valentine Card / Kantina

Hexenzsene

Mkultra

Broken E Strings

Abstraktions

He was also in Long Hind Legs (and I can't find their top song 'Charmed I'm Sure' on deathtube), and he produced loads of bands you liked in the 1990s.

Post your favourite Unwound songs.

[jobotic]

Don;t really know them, although remember their records being around. Sounds like the sort of thing I would have loved, but you don;t have time to listen to everything. That is sad, RIP.

Only just occurred to me that they are probably called Unwound (like a watch) not Unwound (like an injury) as I've always read it.

[cosmic-hearse]

Sad news.

Likewise, loved them as a teenager - they seemed to fuse all the power, melody and aggression of the (post) hardcore bands that I listened to at the time (Rites of Spring, Born Against, Universal Order of Armageddon, Drive Like Jehu). And unlike them they were still active circa 1998 so I got to see them a couple of times, once upstairs at The Garage with Bob Tilton and Comet Gain (I think) and once at a record shop in Croydon.

Great band - have been revisiting such music after cooling on it for many years, sad that it should take a tragedy for me to return to Unwound.

RIP

[Inspector Norse]

Yeah, I liked them, though I came very late and initially wasn't keen: thought what little I'd heard was too shouty and scratchy, didn't have the hooks or melodies of Drive Like Jehu or the like. "Post-hardcore" or whatever you like to call that style is a strange one for me, as I can enjoy DLJ or At the Drive-In a lot, for example, while being left completely cold by something like Fugazi or Refused.

Tried them again a few years ago and found I was wrong: they're not that immediate - unless you're the type to be grabbed by the rawness and shouting than by any musical hook - but there's a lot going on there under the surface and the way their sound constantly evolved over their career means that they stayed interesting.

RIP

[The Mollusk]

Unwound are fucking great, this sucks

[Dirty Boy]

I've been meaning to give this band a proper listen for years now and listened to Repetition just the other week. Surprise surprise they are fucking great.

RIP.

This is maybe not the thread for it, but Faraquet are another amazing math rock action group. Check 'em out pop pickers.

[Olarrio]

Unwound were an incredible band and I'm very sad to hear this. There's something about their sound throughout their catalogue that just absolutely gets to me, a chemical brain reaction. I love them.

If suicide is the cause of death the lyrics to Lady Elect feel eerily prescient:

Goodbye to all the ones
Who left you to yourself
To be invisible
To seem impossible

Leave it to yourself
To find it somewhere else
Safe outside of time
Martyr of a kind

Don't want to know
Don't want to know

They asked me why you died
I knew the reason why
Instead I gave a lie
Just came to say goodbye

[Gregory Torso]

If suicide is the cause of death

I might have been a bit hasty with that actually, port had been drunk, the sea was rough. Someone on electrical audio mentioned he was an alcoholic, but anyway, the cause doesn't matter, it's still a tragedy. 47 is a bullshit check-out age.

I get totally what you mean about a sound, like the whole aesthetic of a band, just being in tune with you. Had a similar feeling with Polvo and early Deerhoof, just a band that you hear and go "yes, mate, an absolute yes to that", the soul responds.

I never really heard their last album, Leaves Turn Inside You, regarded as their best, but I've been listening over the past few days and it's lush as.

Scarlette

[The Mollusk]

I get totally what you mean about a sound, like the whole aesthetic of a band, just being in tune with you. Had a similar feeling with Polvo and early Deerhoof, just a band that you hear and go "yes, mate, an absolute yes to that", the soul responds.

I'm so heat-exhausted right now but I'd just like to tip my hat (even though I don't have a tippable hat, who does? Twats, that's who) to this. I'd also chuck Shellac on that little list.

[sevendaughters]

Unwound were great (been listening to Challenge for a Civilised Society a lot recently) and just love Vern's tractor-pull bass sound. I don't really know much about them or the division of labour in the group, but I think their music has held up a lot better than a lot of their peers did, partly because it seemed to resist becoming banalised by watered down versions from inferior groups, or being a cartoonish parody or a bunch of easy cliches.