Quasi: The Sword Of God : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Despite occasional stints as Elliott Smith's backing band and drummer Janet Weiss' involvement with Sleater-Kinney, Quasi's worldview remains reassuringly insular on its fifth album. Circling around the tenuous relationship between songwriters (and former lovers Weiss and singer-guitarist Sam Coomes), The Sword of God is filled with mournful melodies and tantalizing barbs on woozy songs like, "The Curse of Having It All" ("Hostile and sad, he made her turn bad") and "From A Hole In The Ground" ("Between yourself and me, the biggest walls you've ever seen"). It's heavy stuff, but Quasi's not called the indie Fleetwood Mac for nothing.

AIDIN VAZIRI
(August 20, 2001)