The Autumn Telescope Got Changed (2001)
This was initially a self-distributed demo album, recorded back when they were billing themselves as Satanstompingcaterpillars and given out to a small circle of friends. The band reissued it in 2010 as a digital album and limited edition CD or vinyl. I decided to count it as a "bonus" review because there's really no way I'm going to write about it without making comparisons to their later work.
It's sort of interesting that they chose to re-release such a minimalist album a year after their most lavishly produced one (Eating Us). A few of these tracks were re-used for Falling Through A Field, and Tobacco is singing with the same metallic croak he usually used on that album. However, taken as a whole, this has an entirely different sound from any other BMSR album. Instrumentation is usually limited to clean electric guitar and the occasional primitive synth - percussion of any sort is rare, and when it's there it seems to be a pair of very primitive and clumsily-played synth-drum pads.
If anything, this makes the album feel even more woozily psychedelic than the rest of their early material. They have a knack for simple but hypnotic guitar parts, and the wide open spaces in the music tend to make the vocals even eerier. While things do start to feel a bit samey after a while, it's pretty cool how they can make music this evocative with so little in the way of instrumentation. While it might not click if you're a fan of the more groove-oriented material on Dandelion Gum and Eating Us, if you like the ambient feel of their earlier albums, this is worth hearing.
Key tracks: Oat, Sad Branch, Runthroughoraroundthepark
