"Web in Front" | |
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Single by Archers of Loaf | |
from the album Icky Mettle | |
Recorded | February 1993 |
Genre | |
Label | Alias |
Songwriter(s) |
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Icky Mettle track listing | |
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Web in Front is a song by American indie rock band Archers of Loaf, originally released as a 7" single on Alias Records in 1993. It was their first release on the Alias label, and their first single from their debut album Icky Mettle . [2] [3] The original single also included the tracks "Bathroom" and "Tatayana". [4]
"Web in Front" launched Icky Mettle to high-ranking positions on the college charts, including #18 on the CMJ New Music Report Top 150. [5] The single was played regularly on both college radio and MTV, [2] and its music video was featured in an episode of Beavis & Butthead. [5]
When "Web in Front" was originally released, music critics often compared it to Pavement and Superchunk. [3] For example, Charles Aaron wrote in Spin that the song was "...a less fettered and more frolicsome rewrite of Pavement's "From Now On" (from Perfect Sound Forever ). [4] The New York Times ' Neil Strauss described the song as frontman Eric Bachmann's "...own tongue-in-cheek version of a love song, and a perfect combination of weirdness with pop intuition." [6]
In a review of Seconds Before the Accident , a 2000 Archers of Loaf live album, Pete Nicholson described "Web in Front" as a "pop classic". [7] In 2012, Pitchfork Media's Matt LeMay wrote that "..."Web in Front" is quite simply among the finest indie rock songs ever written. That a song whose lyrics are all but impossible to parse literally comes off as so immediate and relatable speaks both to Bachmann's skill with words-as-sounds, and to his bandmates' ability to put force and nuance behind his voice." [8] Also in 2012, Pitchfork's Paul Thompson wrote that the song "...isn't just their finest song, it's their defining moment, their rocket-shot into the canon." [9]
Pitchfork ranked the song as the 77th best track of the 1990s in a 2010 list. [10]
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