Music Box | Overlooked Albums | Lync

Mike Newmark Columnist

Lync
These Are Not Fall Colors
[K Records; 1994]

One of the most unsung acts on K Records, Lync’s only flaw was that they didn’t last long enough to reach anyone who could have celebrated them. Before the Brooklyn Invasion, indie rock’s nucleus was Olympia, Wash., and Lync did more to define its sound than most anyone else: angular, chaotic post-hardcore at the meeting point between Seattle’s grunge, Louisville’s nascent post-rock and D.C.’s hardcore punk. Logic tells us that they shouldn’t have wallowed in obscurity for two years only to flame out, but then, little in the music business is logical.

For a handful of Washingtonians and critics, however, Lync was instrumental in helping to invent emo. It’s practically an insult to call anything emo these days, but hearing Lync’s lone LP, These Are Not Fall Colors, today is like seeing a strand of modern rock’s DNA. There’s scores of emotion here, but it’s unusually puzzling and oblique; guitar chords hit you sidelong and ricochet off the contrapuntal bass, splattering nervous energy everywhere. The fuzzy, lo-fi production is pure early ’90s indie, lending Fall Colors the edginess of a Dinosaur Jr. demo tape. The cumulative effect is that of a wild beast crouched behind leaves—partially obscured but powerful nonetheless.

Lyrics-wise, Lync is more Unwound than Sunny Day Real Estate—difficult to understand. I can make out Sam Jayne screaming “Sometimes” over and over in “Perfect Shot” and “Where has it gone?” in “Pennies to Save,” but the words are mostly garbled, content to lay buried underneath the music. It’s an egoless move that, either by accident or design, only adds to the album’s mystique. The dam finally breaks near the end of the disc, on “Turtle.” Wouldn’t you know it, it’s actually about a turtle—maybe: “Push with hands / Push with head / The shell is broken / But I’m not out yet / I have trouble getting started.” How emo is that? Still, it sounds more like something sung to preschoolers than a poem ripped out of a 13-year-old’s journal, and it’s a cute conclusion to an album that almost risks taking itself too seriously.

From a purely sonic perspective, Lync has more in common with early ’90s art-punk groups like Jawbox and Shudder to Think than a heart-on-sleeve chart-topper like New Found Glory. In fact, Lync most reminds me of Roadside Monument, Castor, Juno and other bands that found themselves halfway between emo and twisty, cerebral math-rock. Lync struck a similar balance: If the studio mastering on Fall Colors was big and messy, the playing was angular and serpentine even when chained to a 4/4 meter. Emotionality wasn’t the goal, per se, but the byproduct of three people giving it their all and making a huge, complicated, beautiful noise. That said, it’s easy to hear classic “emo-isms” before they ran through the commercial flattener: Sam Jayne’s vocals are gravelly and yearning, and the guitar line that begins “Angelfood Fodder & Vitamins” would shortly become one of the most ripped-off riffs in the genre. But Fall Colors is no more emo than any post-hardcore record that balanced artistry with feeling; rather, it’s a curious snapshot of what emo might have been.