It's New to Me: Are You Building a Temple in Heaven? by Butterglory (1996)

Baseball card of the New York Giants' John Montgomery Ward, star pitcher, shortstop, and manager, by D. Buchner & Co., 1887

My special lady-friend knows how to make a grand romantic gesture - for Valentine's Day this year, she gave me a copy of Our Noise: the Story of Merge Records. It's a great read if you have nostalgia for the '90s indie scene - personally, I had flashbacks to drooling over Superchunk t-shirts in a Singapore record store. The downside? It made me want to buy pretty much everything ever released by Merge Records (except for Erectus Monotone - even I have some standards.) I was especially interested in the full chapter dedicated to the non-rise and total fall of Butterglory, one of the first bands that Merge tried to push in a big way.

I'm only really familiar with the early Butterglory singles (not for any elitist reason - I just picked up a copy of their well-reviewed singles collection Downed at some point). I decided to try one of their proper albums, which got some guarded praise from critics while being constantly accused of riding Pavement's coattails. I purchased 1996's Are You Building a Temple in Heaven?, and I've got to say that it's a stretch to say that these kids from Lawrence, Kansas were ripping off Steven Malkmus's jangly slack-rock style. It's true that vocalist Matt Suggs does under-enunciate, and there's some similarity in the timbre of his voice. And it's true that a couple songs on this record ("The Halo Over Your Head" and "It's Still Raining") have those lazy-genius guitar riffs that Pavement traded in circa Crooked Rain Crooked Rain. But the band's use of boy-girl vocals, groaning organ, and their pure indie-pop style really sets them apart from Pavement.

Are You Building a Temple in Heaven? has two obvious singles, "She Clicks the Sticks" and "She's Got the Akshun!", but every song on the album has its charms. When Debby Vander Wall takes the lead vocals on the stomping "Sit in the Car" and the sleepy "The Captain Stood Sturdy", the Pavement comparisons evaporate completely, and the C86ish guitar sound of "You'll Never Be (As Good as That)" and "Edward Brown" shows that Matt Suggs was a connoisseur of his indie-pop forbears. But my favorite song on the album is easily "Rivers", which adds an insistent plinking piano to the buzzing organ and guitar strum to create a sound I can only describe as a "bouncy drone". It's a sound that I found in those early Butterglory songs (my all-time favorite being "Better Gardens, Better Homes"), and I have some kind of epiphany when those handclaps come in after the guitar solo. It doesn't get much better than that.

"Rivers" by Butterglory