Gesture and hum

Orbit are not original, but that's not bad

by Richard C. Walls

Libido Highway (A&M) by Orbit -- a Boston-based post-Nirvana mainstream-rock trio of vocalist/guitarist Jeff Lowe Robbins, bassist Wally Gagel, and drummer Paul Buckley -- is a good example of what Doghouse Reilly, in his seminal book Debacle Road, referred to as "the ecstasy of influence." It boils down to this: early creative efforts are less likely to offer transmuted influences than to present aspects of them as undigested motifs. Hence on Libido we have the repeated occurrence of Nirvana's "Teen Spirit" signature lick (a guitar sprawl brought up short), of Bono enunciation, at least one perfectly realized Paul Westerberg chorus ("Amps"), a soupçon of Sonic Youth ("Why You Won't"), and no doubt a few other things I'm not encyclopedic enough to detect.

Which doesn't mean they're bad. Orbit have a bracing sound, the production is clean and beefed-up enough to belie their numbers, and their horny songs of breakable relationships and modes of transportation are consistent and healthy (no death or dope as near as I can tell). It's straight rock with the exception of the brief closing "Gazer," which features an actual piano and a big woolly synth-like sound that seems to have wandered in from an old Moody Blues album. The lyrics are mildly off-center, just as the girls who populate the songs are definitely off their Lithium. "She's a car broken down out on the highway/She's a good little girl but her daddy don't know," Robbins sings on "Medicine" (a pretty explicit title). On "Rockets" it comes out "Pills and potions and ether air/Beds and bugs are everywhere/Don't think twice, Baby Blue." (Okay, I added that last part.)

But what makes Libido Highway elusive from a critic's point of view is its standing as an example of the codification of indie/alterna-rock. (On A&M now, the group started out on their own Lunch label, and the players are definitely spawns of the DIY ethos.) Once you get to the second- or even third-generation practitioners of an innovative concept like punk and/or its steroidal stepchild grunge, what once had the weight of historical imperative -- something that needed to be done -- becomes merely the way something is done. Which is why, to put it bluntly, the younger and more inexperienced you are, the more readily you'll be able to take Orbit to heart.

Being neither one nor the other I can't hear Orbit as anything other than a strong statement at the end of a long slog down a certain aesthetic path. But that goes beyond the influential motifs referred to above -- and I didn't even mention the surf drums on the bridge of "Motorama" or the "Satisfaction" riff at the end of "Nocturnal Overdrive," because those fall under the old headings of eclecticism and homage. If you've been following the story thus far, you can see that Orbit intuitively make their stand in a place of shared gestures and diminished meanings.

I repeat, this doesn't make them bad. Bush are bad. Bad is when you can't tell the insincerity from the stupidity, the ignorance from a lack of imagination. Squeezing water from a well that's on the verge of running dry, Orbit do pretty well. If they're cynical, it's well-hidden. Their misogyny is tempered by a respect for lust -- in any case, I suspect, it's on the way out. And their sound is ear candy, superficial and plush, which I mean as a compliment.

The question that often arises at the advent of a first album is whether the band show potential for growth. A more pertinent question here is whether the area Orbit are working has in itself room for growth. I think not. Meanwhile, only those averse to the irresponsible pleasures of rock will reject this offering of empty calories.