Home » Music » Indie Music » 20 Minute Loop: Decline of Day

20 Minute Loop: Decline of Day

© **

Ah, San Francisco...distant, northern neighbor to my Los Angeles. But while we share the same state lines, there are more differences between the cities than you'd find between some countries. Perhaps I embellish. But the California bloodline is a difficult one to trace; taken together, San Fran and L.A. seem not so much sisters as mismatched roommates, an urban Odd Couple.

Now comes another reason for Angelenos to be covetous. The band is 20 Minute Loop, the album is Decline of Day, and they are set apart from other bands by the tandem of Greg Giles and Kelly Atkins, who share songwriting and lead vocal duties (guitarist Joe Ostrowski is also a co-writer on three songs).

The songs move through a diverse terrain, from pretty to punk, from quaint to querulous. The songs are rarely without a strong hook, but also rarely stray into pop predictability (listen for the timing; things sometimes happen before or after you think they're "supposed" to happen).

Giles and Atkins both have a penchant for provocative and quirky lyrics, and few bandmates better complement one another at the microphone, especially when they're singing the words of the other. The Kim Deal/Black Francis comparison has been made many times, but it's accurate only in terms of serving as an archetype. Atkins is, judging by the credits, much more involved in the songwriting process than Deal ever was with the Pixies, and her vocal presence commands more time at the forefront.

To give an indication of what the songs are actually about, suffice it to say that Atkins is somewhat obsessed with Kali (the Hindu goddess of destruction), while Giles writes about cheerful things like an especially bad day in the life of a toothless Arab woman ("Jubilation"). And just in case they needed more ammunition for potentially dark material, apparently Giles and Atkins-perhaps not surprisingly, considering the chemistry-were involved in a now-ended romance.

To their credit, the quintet (Atkins, Giles, Ostrowski, bassist Nils Erickson and percussionist Ethan Turner) never sinks under their own macabre weight. In fact, some of the songs ("All Manner," "Force of Habit") are downright lovely...albeit certainly still somber. This is what is so striking about the band, that they so deftly fuse darkness with brightness, that they are able to explore the shadows and still able to celebrate life.

It would probably be possible to parse out all the ingredients of Decline of Day, but-as a whole-20 Minute Loop is successful in carving out their own niche. In fact, it's one of the most challenging and ultimately worthwhile discs to come across my desk in 2001. Damn you, San Francisco, we wish these guys were ours.

The copyright of the article 20 Minute Loop: Decline of Day in Indie Music is owned by . Permission to republish 20 Minute Loop: Decline of Day in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.