Everything, Anything, Nothing is an expanded album-length reissue of a CD EP that itself was never released until the band in question had already split up. A trio from Louisville, KY (previously the home of
Squirrel Bait,
Antietam,
Slint, and others), the
Loved were only extant for two years in the mid-'90s, and in that time recorded only these ten small-scale, low-key pop songs, one of which they never even bothered to give a title to. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of similar stories in pop history -- chances are excellent that anyone reading this has a similar tape or CD-R of demos and unfinished rough mixes in their closet -- and it's not like the three members of the
Loved went on to do anything of a higher profile later. In fact, their label, Temporary Residence Ltd., is playing up this Anydude angle, referring to the band as "accidentally mysterious" and pointedly not including any biographical data in the album's press kit, not even the bandmembers' names. (For the record, they were singer and guitarist
Mike Weis, bassist
Benny Clark, and drummer
Joey Yates, all of them veterans of various even more minor bands on the Louisville punk and indie scene.) Anyone who lived in a university town such as Louisville in the '90s knew of a local band that sounded like the
Loved, who played the local undergrad watering hole once a month or so and also opened for bands like
Helium and
Guided by Voices when they passed through town: these ten songs are entirely within the tradition of the more melodic end of '90s indie guitar rock, all diffident vocals, obscure lyrics, and guitars sent through a rack of effects pedals. The thing is, enough time has passed since bands like the
Loved could be found on photocopied flyers posted on telephone poles and community bulletin boards that there's now something nostalgic and charming about slight but catchy songs like "Her Tiny Little Heart" and "It's Soooo Bad." Yeah, they still sound like a slightly amateurish mash-up of
Pavement,
Bleach-era
Nirvana and the
Blake Babies, but now that this combination is less of a cliché, the mild pleasures of
Everything, Anything, Nothing are more clear.