KEXP's Don Yates wrote of Slender Means' debut album Neon & Ruin: "Every single song is spiked with memorable hooks ... In a year of great Northwest releases, Neon & Ruin is one of the very best." Before they could record that auspicious debut, each member of Slender Means had been around the block once or twice. There was the time Josh Dawson (Telecaster, voice) played with his old band Light Heavyweight at Hollywoods Viper Room for a roomful of scenesters and label-types. (Never again, he resolved.) There was Bugs In Amber, the highly regarded orchestral pop-rock outfit comprised of three-fifths of Slender Means: Sonny Votolato (Rickenbacher, harmonies), David E. Martin (keyboards), and Paul Pugliese (bass). And finally, Eric Wennberg (drums) had built a following with indie rock Problem With Heroes. Dawson and Votolato even played together, Quarrymen-like, as teenagers in the fondly remembered Fields of Mars. Everybody had plenty of reason to know what he was looking for (or not) in a band by the time Slender Means began to assemble, a process each describes in terms of planets-aligning synchronicity. The band laid down a four-song demo and started playing well-received shows around Seattle. When they went into Jupiter Studios with Martin Feveyear (Screaming Trees, the Presidents Of The USA, Damian Jurado), they worked as Neon & Ruin would ultimately sound: quick but not rushed, economical and fat-free, with little in the way of even old-school studio chicanery like overdubs. The result is that rare thing: a debut album cohesive enough to be a bands third or fourth. The songs themselves are the attractions here. The rhythm section is rock solid, the guitar bi-play intricate, and Votolatos harmonies manage to improve Dawsons already pitch-perfect tenor. But this combination merely provides the canvas. The songs are the paintings, collectively the gallery that KEXP's Yates described as an amazingly accomplished album of indie pop-rock perfection.
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