The Clean -- "At the Bottom"
When Merge Records released The Clean's Anthology in 2003, it was a revelation to those of us who had never heard the band before. Everything sounded familiar, in part because the band was so good at swallowing up the sounds of their contemporaries from the northern hemisphere and spitting them back out as something new, and partly because The Clean had such a significant emphasis on the bands we did know (Pavement comes to mind). One song on Anthology might sound like a brilliant send-up of 60s garage beat, while the next deftly serves up New Wave tones in a rougher, more low-fi fashion, while the next draws on pure punk noise and energy.
"At the Bottom," a moody but active instrumental organized around the same three bass notes bouncing up and down throughout the song, doesn't fit into any of these categories. The studio version on Anthology has some layered guitar tracks, but the live version also included on Anthology makes just as much noise -- if not more -- which is pretty remarkable considering that the guitar is pretty much taking it one string at a time throughout. This track has a definitive 1980s guitar sound--not the chimey, chorused sound that is most typical of the era, nor the flattened out distortion of the big Marshall amps, but something different. The only way to describe it is to say that it's the sound of helicopters flying overhead.
If you want to know what a guitar could sound like in the 1980s, here's your song.
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