Gay? (1997), Split Personalities (1998), Separation Anxieties (2000), Lost Time (2002), If We Stayed Alive (2023), 12 Rods
I like the idea of Pitchfork not focus-grouping perfect 10s, dishing ‘em out impulsively, almost as a favour, on a whim. Most listeners love music instinctively, or I hope we do, and P4K handing out a faultless score to 12 Rods’ Gay? shows that the publication’s writers were once like the rest of us, sympathetic and blinkered and impulsive. Even if it happened just the once.
Perhaps it seems unfair to talk about 12 Rods solely through Pitchfork, but it’s justified. The latter has remained a much greater cultural force, even now, nearing its (apparent) end. Gay’s actual sound? Soaring fuzz-indie, a product of the reverb-soaked alt-rock-worshipping ‘90s. Split Personalities refined it all a bit, focusing more intently on melody with less fuzz and more stylistic diversions – a superior, refined work of the same era (with a couple of the same songs).
It's Pitchfork’s perfect rating that refuses to allow 12 Rods to fade into obscurity – but also drives listeners (ie me, particularly non-Americans) to engage with the rest of the band’s discography. That critical process allows a panned work like Separation Anxieties to find new audiences; indeed, it succeeds more than the reaction it stirred in critics of the time, admirable enough in its pop intent if still clearly a lesser effort. On the flipside, I’m not sure Lost Time is quite the return to form it was heralded as; a return to 12 Rods’ earlier style, sure, but not necessarily to quality.
In many ways the crowning statement in 12 Rods’s longevity arrived just last year. A full two decades after Lost Time came If We Stayed Alive, a record largely (but not entirely) unremarkable in content but entirely notable for its very existence. 12 Rods doesn’t owe everything to Pitchfork, but it owes enough – let all that be a testament to criticism.
Pick(s): ‘Mexico’, ‘I Wish You Were a Girl’, ‘Radioaction’, ‘Telephone Holiday’, ‘Twice’
