BLENDER -DECEMBER 2005
The Standard
"Albatross" ****
Yep Roc Records

Artsy Portland, Oregon, five-piece recall the exciting days when Radiohead still played guitars.

The Standard are so underground that even the underground hasn’t heard of them. On their fourth album in six years, Tim Putnam lays fragile vocals and haunting piano melodies over tightly wound post punk rhythms that add immediacy to lyrics about missed opportunities and broken relationships. “Not Asleep” and “How Deep To Cut” evoke the beauty of R.E.M.’s “Automatic For The People” as filtered through Radiohead’s prog-rock sonic games. “Play The Part” laments that the drugs just don’t work, while, “In Waves” builds slowly to an avalanche of guitars as Putnam contemplates despair and inarticulateness. Or so it seems- his lyrics are pretty damn mystifying, which might explain why the Standard are a cult band without a cult.

-James Barber