Aural Fixations

FOR AGAINST
Echelons
(Words On Music)
Nebraska's For Against can look back on a superlative catalog of grand, sweeping rock and pop music. The band's consistency has been amazing throughout its career; despite there being little variation on the trio's basic sound. Leader Jeffrey Runnings' downbeat ruminations on communication breakdown always float over the top of propulsive rhythms and crystalline guitar dripping in delay, but every For Against album stands tall simply because the band does this better than anyone else. Echelons, a reissue of the band's 1987 debut on CD for the first time, is one of the group's best. Admittedly, that's probably by virtue of it being the first album, setting the tone of the band's subsequent releases. But even 17 years on, dynamic, tuneful numbers like "It's a Lie," "Daylight" and "Forget Who You Are" sound fresh and timeless. Harry Dingman's ringing spiderwebs of guitar and Greg Hill's rush of percussion seem the perfect foils for Runnings' thrusting bass, and the four-stringer's sweet voice contrasts nicely with his heartsick poetry. Only "Loud and Clear," on which Dingman switches out his guitar for some very, um, vintage-sounding synthesizers, shows signs of the decade in which it was recorded. The disk culminates in the ambitious, awesomely powerful "Broke My Back," a nearly eight-minute epic that rolls everything good about For Against (which is pretty much everything) into one grand, melodic, emotionally taut ball of memorable music. Finally, those without turntables can discover the glory of the first flowerings of a remarkable American band. Michael Toland