Better Days Will Haunt You : Chavez : Review : Rolling Stone

Chavez's "the guard attacks" is a song you would play for a Martian who wanted to know what electric guitars are for. It's only three minutes long, yet Clay Tarver and Matt Sweeney splatter the walls with power chords and explosive harmonics, surging from peak to peak. Plus, the words are funny ("Your uncertain age gives me the shakes"), and the drummer is a madman. These guys never got their due, because they were out of step with most Nineties indie rock -- they were cerebral yet not especially tortured, fond of high-end sonics, metropolitan at a time no band wanted to admit it came from New York. But this totally crucial two-CD comp shows off Chavez's brilliance, editing metal textures, prog structures and post-punk feedback into compactly melodic gems like "Unreal Is Here" and "Peeled Out Too Late." When Sweeney sings the line "There is nothing to not be amazed at," the feeling is still mutual.