Christe Front Drive...godly!

Okay, so longish lack of posting...sorry about that, still no wireless in the flat but I do own a Dongle now! (hur hur...funny word..) so can update this thing, albeit quite slowly..so here goes..

Christe Front Drive

Okay, so the other day I was at the Rough Trade record store near Brick Lane. One of my favourite places in the city that is London incidentally, and I was looking for a Mineral album. Now they didn’t have said album, but they did have something I thought I would never see in a shop in England…ever.
They had a copy of Stereo, the only full length studio LP by Christe Front Drive.
You will, I am sure, have never heard of them. Probably because, as mentioned, they only released one full length LP and as far as I am aware they never played a show outside of North America. Yet they are one of the bands if you’re into mid-nineties emo and post-hardcore, which I am.
Now I’m not one to rave about a band just on their reputation, so what about the actual music, never mind how god awfully difficult it is to find. Well the music is mainly very melodic, guitar driven emo- A bit like Sunny Day Real estate but with a cleaner guitar sound. The lyrics are sparse and often not very obvious and quite often the songs will seem to consist more of long instrumental passages dominated by complex, two part guitar lines. These passages build and build and build until they erupt into something you can most definitely bang a head to.
My main issue is, frankly, that there just isn’t enough music for my liking, as in; I’d quite like it if they’d made a second record. Not going to happen but still, one relatively short album, a few EPs and splits and some appearances on compilation CDs that are all hard to get hold of isn’t quite enough to sate my appetite…
So there you have it, a little bit about a band you’ve never heard of. Don’t take just my word for it, look them up and try and get hold of some of their music. The album is available on the internet as a 2010 reissue (with a DVD included! Freebies!) and if you look really hard you might find the original ’96 version somewhere for a mad price. I’d get the new one though, as it’s been remastered and the DVD (of their last ever gig) is worth a quick watch, despite it being shot on a 1990’s quality camcorder… Still, the album itself in whatever form you find it is a quality purchase, a good eight or nine out of ten. There’s also a second CD, called Anthology which compiled their other released work; it’s only a single side, which shows you how little the band released, but is much easier to find than trying to get all of the EPs and other releases it compiles separately- if you like Stereo then get Anthology…
Or you could be a geek like me and try and FIND all the EPs etc…

Anyway, until next time, have fun.