Frame of Mind: Instrumentals

A decent band in Alaska? Really? Yeah, me too. It's not like you see this quintet's metropolis of Anchorage on anyone's tour schedule or anything, so it must be pretty lonely up there playing this kind of stuff. But it's admirable, too, and if Railer sticker the town half as obsessively as they claim, maybe they're attracting and satisfying a local audience who's starved for this stuff. The band sports a basic but effective atmospheric post-punk sound, using excellent guitars with just enough effects (not too much air in them), some sinewy, soundtracky keyboards, lead breaks, simple building-block drumming, and more-than-fair vocals from leader Randall Scott, one of the most enthusiastic promoters a small scene could have. At times they fall a little into a bit of a mechanical new wave habit ("Deja Vu"), but the songs and style aren't all cut out of some prefab mold — the linear, seesaw "Kiss Fix" gives away to the more rhythmic step-beat of "Crossing the Line," a sort of Cure "10:15 Saturday Night" for the '00s, and Scott intones, "Every morning is just another night/I'm thinking too hard when my mind isn't right/I often wonder if I'm so far ahead or falling behind." And "Theory To What is Beautiful" sounds like soft New Order. No mentions of the cold (the band can't afford the heating on their studio where they rehearse and record, brrrr), but these guys don't complain, they do. "Resolute" indeed.