LIVE REVIEW: Fastbacks, Hater, Valis@Showbox, Seattle, 5/2

first appeared in The Rocket, 5/14/97
by Dan Johnson


The Fastbacks, exceptionally tight since finishing a world tour late last year, put smiles on every face in the house with a typically exuberant set. If you haven't seen this veteran Seattle band by now, hurry up! It'll probably only be around for another 15 years. It's hard to say the same for Hater, a band featuring ex-Soundgardeners Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd. Hater's songs were good enough, along the lines of a latter day Heartbreakers, but the performances were so underpracticed and uninspired (and Shepherd had such a huge chip on his shoulder), that the question on everybody's minds was: "Do you expect us to clap just because two of you sold 10,000,000 records in your last band?" Tad's Kurt Danielson, Mudhoney's Dan Peters and Screaming Trees' Van Conner make up three-fourths of Valis, so it was no surprise that most of the band's tunes were grounded in the gut-busting bottom end. Conner's singing, bless his heart, was as tone-deaf as Linda McCartney's, so the songs were often disheveled heaps of noise. But collectively, Valis, unlike Hater, seemed to have a good time.


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