Finn’s Motel reviewed
Finn’s Motel
Escape Velocity
(Scat)
Basement-based, 40-year-old classic rock singer-songwriter. Scat Records. Revolving-door policy on membership. Sound familiar?
Guess again. While Robert Pollard has retired the Guided By Voices moniker, he has not revived himself as Finn’s Motel. This St. Louis-based “band” is really Joe “Finn” Thebeau, a Midwest rock vet with no real claims to fame. Eschewing the lo-fi, in-joke demeanor of GBV, Thebeau and friends read from the gospels of Cheap Trick, The Who, Foo Fighters, and occasionally Pollard (“Recent Linear Landscapes” even has one of *those titles) while playing it pretty much straight. Adam Schmitt and Thebeau go for a big sound in the consistent production without ever hamming it up. Lyrically, Escape Velocity has a personal bent your casual, ironic indie rocker won’t know what to do with (“A case of empty brown bottles/soldiers fallen in battle in my ongoing war against gravity”), but also might be Thebeau’s ticket out of obscurity.
— Steve Forstneger
Click here to download “Of Cycles And Engines.”
