The Capstan Shafts, Kind Empires
The Capstan Shafts get rapped for sounding so much like (and apparently being nearly as prolific as) Guided by Voices. Like that’s a bad thing. But now that Dean Wells has availed himself of steady bandmates and full-fledged recording studios for a while now, the differences are apparent and invigorating. The guitar solos, for starters. The plaintive wails, for another—totaling different emotional angle from the bar-band bravado of Robert Pollard et al. Interludes such as the disarming two-minute romantic swirl “Like Them from Arthouse Floozy” or the tempo-laden “Hating on the Fleshless Days.” The unabashed real-life-expectations rave-up of “The Deli Girls Give Me What I Ask For…” Totally stands on its own, this stack of all-American pop (via Vermont and points South). Dean Wells, to poach his own words, is no “Garbagetime Pumpfaker.”