Painting vulnerability in shades of gray

Despite what you might think, we do go through all our reader mail . And there’s been a ton of great responses from all of you and we're constantly opening up to new music.

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But every now and then someone will write in with a suggestion for Indie Study that’s cosmically-aligned with our MP3 playlists. I’m talking to you, Brenna Judkins of San Diego, Calif. She wrote us a while ago about Pinback, one of my favorite bands out of the Left Coast:

“Made up of various musical geniuses from other San Diego bands, Pinback started as a side project that turned into a full time project, and thank GOD… Pinback is — at least from what I've discussed with other fans and we’ve agreed — loved for their interesting and complicated musical arrangements, songs that stick out their tongues at the 3-minute alt-rock song. But most importantly, I love Pinback because they are like nothing I've ever witnessed before.”

See, now that’s a tall order. I still haven’t gotten the chance to see Pinback, so the “nothing I’ve ever witnessed before” distinction currently belongs to The Arcade Fire . But for now, we’re rocking Pinback’s newest release, “Summer in Abaddon.”

Pinback has carved out an intricate little place for themselves where pop meets pomp. Each release balances between sober self-indulgence and lean, pretty rock. Strap on a pair of your favorite headphones and let the crystalline opener “Non-Photo Blue” swirl around your head. It practically tickles your ears with gentle curls of bass and prickly guitar. Measured restraint is the name of the game, and their well-worn formula keeps getting better over the years.

Principles Rob Crow and Armistead Burwell Smith IV (also known as “Zach,” which is easier to type) play tricks with their relatively spare instrumentation. Yeah, it may sound like just drums, bass and guitars, but they build heady, layered rock crescendos with such workmanlike precision that you think you’ve been duped by an army of slick producers.

What keeps Pinback from edging into adjectives like “clinical” or “mechanical” are the intimate vocals of Crow and Smith. Together, they weave in and out of focus to evoke a distant landscape made up of acute angles and hazy introspection.

As upbeat and taut as “Fortress” gets, Crow and Smith still call out “Stop / It’s too late / I’m feeling frustrated / I see no sign of fortress.” "The Yellow Ones" is practically a therapist's all-you-can-eat buffet of psychoanalysis: "I feel my head goin' down again / You disappear from the foreground / I'm unaware which way is down / A major repair is underway / Require a blanket of silence."

Crow and Smith seem to have no problem stripping down and revealing the humanity at the heart of the Pinback machine. They may paint “Summer in Abaddon” as a fairly inhospitable season, but it sounds so good that we can’t resist visiting. I’m looking forward to cramming up close to the stage the next time Pinback rolls through. Maybe I'll see you there, Brenna.