The Waxwings: Low to the Ground : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

The first line on the Wax-Wings' first album finds them looking back in awe at a past when idols such as Buffalo Springfield were still a band and the Rolling Stones were still hungry. "I look pale in comparison to the dimly lit horizon,'' sings Dean Fertita, sounding very much like the suburban Detroit record-store clerk he once was. But the band's four-minute pop suite, "Keeping the Sparks,'' brims with neo-psychedelic color, an acoustic reverie cracked open by an Excalibur-like thrust of electric guitar. The group's pale complexion is flushed with new possibilities by the time the next track kicks in: "She takes me across Technicolor motorways," Fertita exults. The Waxwings don't so much re-create the past as learn from it; their acid-tweaked tunefulness is broad enough to embrace lullaby wistfulness ("Sleepy Head"), twang-pop ("Firewood") and jaunty orchestrations ("Low Ceiling"). Dreamily melodic, guitar-based rock hasn't sounded this fresh since Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend. (RS 853)

GREG KOT