Archers of Loaf

March 14 - 21, 1 9 9 6

*** Archers of Loaf

THE SPEED OF CATTLE

(Alias)

Listening to this collection of B-sides, previously unreleased tracks, and cuts from the BBC's John Peel show, you start to wonder what new idiot category could encompass this Chapel Hill band. Alterna-frat mope rock, maybe. The Speed of Cattle is the sound of aimlessness confounded by energy, and insularity defeated by smartass humor that invites us all to share the joke. The music ranges from punkish bursts (the abortive "Bathroom") to misguided epics ("Tatyana," the first song they wrote -- and it seems it) to surf-type instrumentals ("Telepathic Traffic") that sound as if they were being beamed down by UFOs. And there isn't a cut that doesn't suggest the band are knee-deep in a pile of metallic fuzz by the end. The Archers don't try to explain why a song inspired by a flooded radio station includes the refrain "Don't want to be like Ethel Merman," but it's their quirky triumph that, for the duration of the record at least, their oddities make sense -- even if you couldn't begin to say what kind of sense.

-- Charles Taylor