Remember the other day when I said my inbox was next to the "Where Are They Now" file at Pitchfork? You thought I was joking, didn't you? You assumed that my Pitchfork office was a useful figment of my imagination; one of the many expedient literary crutches we Pitchfork writers hobble around on when the discs we're forced to digest fail to inspire or our own creativity otherwise evaporates. Well, I'll let you in on a little secret, friend-– I'm not that creative. My proof? The first of two Samples albums, Here And Somewhere Else, reviewed for your pleasure today.

I first ran into the Samples nearly a decade ago. It was the summer of 1990 and I remember it all too well. I spent the summer in State College, PA, rooming with my buddy Brian and taking a couple of classes. Like most of the students who choose to spend the summer at Penn State, Brian and I never seemed to have enough cash for groceries in the morning, but always drank too many beers the night before. It was a sheltered life, indeed, and the Samples' self- titled debut, the gift of a peculiarly stoney friend in Colorado, was the soundtrack for a summer of white people biting their bottom lips in a futile attempt to groove and my own futile attempts to bed the elusive Carrie Shawley.

Well, we're now on the cusp of the summer of 1999, my good friend Brian is a marketing director and the father of the coolest 17- month- old boy on the planet. (Props to ya', Riley.) Me, I'm an accountant of dwindling enthusiasm by day and a writer of growing prowess by night. I've traded Pennsylvania for the gentler environs of the West and just about the coolest woman on the planet awaits my call after I finish this review. For the life of me, I can't even remember what Carrie Shawley looks like.

And once again, the Samples and I cross paths. But while the intermittent decade has brought unforeseen changes and challenges to the likes Brian, me, and even you dear reader, the Samples are eerily similar. Here and Somewhere Else is a beautifully preserved time capsule of the days before Kurt Cobain bloomed, Matthew Sweet soured and Uncle Tupelo bought the farm. And frankly, it's better off left buried. If you enjoy such inanities as "Nursery rhymes and Doctor Seuss/ Where are all the wild things/ Little pigs and Mother Goose as your father sings" and "Somewhere in my heart there's a scar that's left from you/ It's healing there slowly/ It's the most that I can do/ We're going through changes" set to music that is best described as Dave Matthews Lite, I say to you: Run to the disc store directly-– but be sure step in front of a bus on the way.

I have no idea how the Samples have survived a decade that bested so many of their superiors, but if I were in the business of disproving Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest, I would hang my hat on Here and Somewhere Else. Preferably somewhere far, far, away.

-Neil Lieberman