In the post-internet age, I don't think bands like this can really exist except in manufactured form. Devoid of a clear focus or direction or sphere of influence, ALTERNATIVE SECTIONS seem to take what they know, what they like and what they want and use the collective force to just BE. Valuable more as a sociological artifact than a listening experience, 1993's Thoughts Of A Broken Image is sometimes carnival punk, sometimes ¡TCHKUNG! styled freak sounds, sometimes Midwestern college reggae, sometimes well-past-its-prime alt/goth/shock rock....and most of the time I spend not enjoying the sounds (which is, let's be honest here, most of the time involved) is spent wondering at them. They shine when they stay quiet, when they stay dark and mysterious, when they focus on the keys and not on the layers of percussion, and when the shrill, nasaly vocals are not front and center...but the whole point is that they just sound like themselves, and that's what is cool. Musical communication is almost always contrived in one way or another, but before those lines of communication were so clearly developed and so readily available, "artists" seemed to have more freedom to go their own way....and those relics are welcome in any form.
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