Splendid E-zine by Ben Hughes

Tuesday, November 25th, 2003

Excerpt: the band scribbles outside the lines while keeping their songs intact. "Under the Maude Moon" drops a battery of jazz drumming and some eerie disembodied voices to great effect, building to a fiery guitar-driven climax.

The Autumn-Waking
The Loudest Birthday Ever EP
Tense Forms

Format Reviewed: CD

The rise of record labels-as-art-collectives is a largely positive development, in my opinion. Throw a bunch of musicians, writers, designers and various creative people together in a room and you’re almost guaranteed to get something interesting. That’s certainly the case with The Autumn-Waking, a product of Chicago’s close-knit Tense Forms family. Like Rainer Maria after four years at RISD, they take a basic emo template and shovel on the art damage with glorious abandon. I’d call this experimental, but I don’t want to scare anyone; on The Loudest Birthday Ever EP, the band scribbles outside the lines while keeping their songs intact. “Under the Maude Moon” drops a battery of jazz drumming and some eerie disembodied voices to great effect, building to a fiery guitar-driven climax. On “To the Wall and Over”, Allison Stanley’s voice dukes it out with Renee Bertsch’s organ for center stage, eventually settling into an uneasy truce. It’s a nice start from a band I hope we’ll be hearing more from soon.
— Ben Hughes

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