Idaho
Year After Year

It was 1992, the year when two disciples of the "sad" American independent scene, Los Angeles natives Jeff Martin and John K. Berry, founded Idaho, a band contemporary to San Francisco's masters of sadness, Red House Painters and American Music Club, but successors and more stylistically akin to the guitar tapestries of Codeine.

"Year After Year" is the first studio album by the Californian band, released by the record label Caroline in 1993, a surprisingly accomplished work where Martin's voice sinks into a catharsis now melancholic, now desperate, dictated by guitars that evoke in the listener's mind a sky full of "frigid stars." The album contemplates the passing of years, first in the most gloomy and desperate way possible in the first half, "Gone" is a kind of Swans song played by Codeine, narrating the last moments of a dying person, "Here To Go," a title in harmony with the previous track, presents the most "violent" guitar moment of the record, relatively associable with the sound of God Machine, while "The Only Road" seems to have come straight out of "Frigid Stars." Idaho's depressed contemplation ends in the calmest and most resigned way with the title track, with Kozelekian progression and the hypnotic closure "Endgame."

A band that is as valuable as the more well-known names of early '90s Slo-Core and an album that during this autumnal period is perfect as a soundtrack for cold rainy afternoons.