6. UnwoundLeaves Turn Inside You
Unwound generated a near flawless discography of work before they disbanded in 2002. It wouldn’t be a stretch at all for me to include any one of their eight studio albums on this list because each of them has taken a turn at the top of my Unwound pile. Still, there’s something overwhelmingly complete and brave about their final album, Leaves Turn Inside You. To record it they built their own studio in Olympia, Washington and produced the music themselves – with the help of Phil Ek. Leading up to this Unwound had seemingly perfected their style of post-grunge, post-hardcore rock. Each player had such an immense ability with their instrument and as a group they created a powerful and fascinating dynamic. Side note: Sara Lund is definitely one of my favourite drummers of all time. Anyway, the work they developed for Leaves Turn Inside Your took a leap of faith and led the band into a much more melodic, psychedelic landscape. At the time this was not ‘cool’. It took courage for them to expand their palette in this way, setting aside what had proven to be a winning formula and laying this epic, two-disc behemoth in front of their fans.
Inevitably there was backlash. Purist Unwound fans weren’t having it. The album is really long, the songs themselves often ambient and overall the pace and tempo of the music is much more mellow and atmospheric than their previous records. Not to mention Unwound used decidedly un-hardcore instruments like Mellotron, piano and (gasp!) string arrangements! What were they thinking?!
Well as far as I’m concerned Unwound were thinking about pushing themselves beyond their comfort zone and into a place that was exciting, challenging and experimental. The results are mind blowing and needless to say we Liars took a large dose of influence from this giant stylistic leap of faith.