Last year was particularly stellar for some of the life-affirming bands who helped write the vibrant 1990s indie-rock movement into the history books. Built to Spill, Superchunk, and Guided by Voices dropped new albums that stack up to their classics, while Pavement embarked on another successful reunion tour. But Archers of Loaf might have one-upped all of their brothers-in-arms. In their heyday, the North Carolina-born band (singer and guitarist Eric Bachmann, guitarist Eric Johnson, bassist Matt Gentling, and drummer Mark Price) were beloved for their smartass noise-punk, whose gloriously shambolic tongue-in-cheekiness made anthemic nuggets such as 1993’s “Web in Front” scuzzily charming. They called it quits in 1998 after their fourth full-length, White Trash Heroes, but re-formed in 2011 for sporadic tours scheduled around day jobs, family life, and solo projects. Last year, the band released their first new album in nearly a quarter century, Reason in Decline—and they knocked it out of the park.
As the story goes, it took some work to find that old thread again. Bachmann is an exceptional tunesmith, and he blossomed in his post-Archers career, first exploring chamber folk as leader of Crooked Fingers and then going solo. He applied his raspy voice to twangy, heart-on-sleeve Americana in the vein of Tom Waits and Bonnie “Prince” Billy, embracing the troubadour role and apparently leaving the snaking twin-guitar sonics, noisy bursts, and throaty wails of Archers in his rearview mirror. Now 52, Bachmann has admitted that he’s felt he could no longer channel his twentysomething angst into songs fit for Archers of Loaf, but he changed his mind after enduring the soul-crushing isolation of the pandemic lockdown and the political strife of the past couple years. That makes Reason in Decline feel like the perfect progression from (and a de facto companion piece to) the matured songwriting on White Trash Heroes.
This grayer, wiser, and more grizzled iteration of Archers still sling their trademark “icky mettle” (the title of their 1993 debut) on buzzsaw ragers such as “Screaming Undercover” and “Misinformation Age,” but they also balance them with poignant ballads. Bachmann does his best to tear your heart right out of your chest on the ambient country tune “Aimee” and the slow-burning piano-driven number “War Is Wide Open.”
On the first leg of their tour to support Reason in Decline, which began in late November, the band put on career-spanning shows, ripping through crowd-pleasers such as “Harnessed in Slums,” “Might,” and “Scenic Pastures” as well as soon-to-be-classics from Reason in Decline, among them “In the Surface Noise” and “Saturation and Light.” That heady mix of songs puts to bed the notion that this reunion is a mere exercise in nostalgia; Archers of Loaf’s second act is about looking forward as much as revisiting indie rock’s long-gone glory years.
Archers of Loaf Weird Nightmare open. Fri 1/13, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 1375 W. Lake, $30, all ages