Further may be best known as the group that spawned
Beachwood Sparks, but it used to be the other way around. For a short time in the mid-'90s, Brent and Darren Rademaker fronted one of the more interesting noise pop bands around, cranking out a barrage of messily endearing, super-hooky singles, EPs, and LPs that earned them lots of underground love, but not much real success. That was definitely one of the factors that led to their splitting up and heading in a different direction; so was the fact that they took their sound about as far as it could go without becoming tired and clichéd. Regardless of how it ended,
Where Were You Then? 1991-1997, an excellent collection of tracks taken from their short career, shows that it was thrilling while it lasted.
Further were heavily indebted at first to Dinosaur Jr.'s method of burying melodies in a tumble of noise, and they never really changed much. Rademaker's vocals and guitars were
Mascis-lite, but their songwriting skills were nearly as good.
J would have loved to add tracks as good as "Over and Out" and "She Lives by the Castle 2" to his catalog, and when the brothers added a little California sunshine to the mix ("Surfing Pointers," the stunningly bright "California Bummer"), they crept up on originality. A few songs even beat
Mascis at his own game, like the achingly beautiful ballad "Quiet Riot Grrrl" and the jangling "Springfield Mods," which added a little U.K. indie pop influence to the sound. Some of the later tracks point the way toward the bands the brothers formed post-
Further -- the driving pop of "I Wanna Be a Stranger" sounds like proto-
Tyde and the guitar-twanging, well-recorded "Be That as It May" bounces hazily like
Beachwood Sparks, only without much country and/or western involved. The original records are even harder to find in 2014 than they were originally, so it's helpful that Bad Paintings has culled some of their best songs -- presented in chronological order -- for OG fans of the group to rediscover and fans of
Milk Music or any number of noisy, '90s-obsessed bands to discover, and fall in love with, for the first time. ~ Tim Sendra