Originally comprised of singer/songwriter Rebecca Gates and drummer Scott Plouf, the Spinanes were a likable rock duo that invigorated the lively Northwest scene with alternately brooding and rollicking tunes. Wedding Gates' lachrymose pop musings to Plouf's propulsive percussion, the band's most notable aspect was their ability to deliver a full-bodied sound with a limited palette of materials. This six-song assemblage of early recordings for Imp Records compiles the group's first couple of singles and hard-to-find tracks. Truly, a release for only the most loyal of Spinanes fans.

The songs on this disc are presumably rare, but virtually indistinguishable in execution from the rest of the Spinanes' body of work, with the exception, perhaps, of Arches and Aisles, the album Gates recorded with friends after Plouf left to become Built to Spill's permanent drummer. The first two Spinanes albums, though, are better documents of what they had to offer. The shambling singles tracks bear the blueprint of Gates' familiar vocal habits and failed-relationship wordplay.

It's telling that the most affecting song on The Imp Years comes with a cover-- "Handful of Hearts" manages to render the break-up of the duo somewhat touching. The moment is fleeting, but it leads to ruminations on the death of "indie" as a self-sustaining, legitimizing force of amateurism and obscurity in music. The listener is left with the sagging realization that the Spinanes came and went, and that neither their presence nor absence amounts to very much in the long run.

This realization, of course, necessitates qualification by the fans, those who at one point or another took a strong liking to the Spinanes and for whom this will doubtless be a significant release. The fact should be made plain that retrospective releases for defunct indie bands such as this are hapless attempts at bringing together loose threads for threadbare audiences paralyzed by the notion that the time and energy invested in appreciating these bands have met with diminishing returns. The ability of this release to spark interest in the Spinanes is undercut by the stylistic redundancy of their accomplished but ultimately standard take on the whole indie rock shtick. Their catalog is a dead horse best left unbeaten.

-S. Murray