Rope-a-Dope is an album by the American indie rock band Antietam, released in 1994.[2] It is named for the boxing technique.[3] The band supported the album with a North American tour.[4]
Production
The album was produced by Lyle Hysen and Antietam.[5]Ira Kaplan contributed to the album's opening track, "Hands Down".[4]Rope-a-Dope includes a cover of Dead Moon's "Graveyard".[6]
Trouser Press thought that "as borne out by songs like the gently psychedelic 'Pine', [Tara] Key has settled into a wafting lower register that accentuates the spooky qualities of her voice; she's also found a way to channel some of her manic onstage attack."[6]Entertainment Weekly deemed "Hands Down" "a wonderfully propulsive, guitar- and organ-driven bucket of noise."[10]The Washington Post opined that "Key's piercing guitar lines are the group's trademark, yet the gentle, [Tim] Harris-sung 'Hardly Believe' has the album's most memorable tune."[11]
Greil Marcus, in Artforum, noted that Key and Harris "can't sing," but wrote that "every time you’re about to give up on this music, Key summons a passage on her instrument that does sing."[12]Guitar Player praised Key's "spectacularly distorted tone that's exuberantly trashy yet retains razor-edged definition."[13]
AllMusic called the album "an unjustly overlooked piece of mid-'90s indie rock," writing that the "high point, and possibly the best thing Antietam ever did, is the 11-minute closer 'Silver Solace', which builds and ebbs with structural grace and contains some of Key's most remarkable singing and soloing."[7]
Track listing
No.
Title
Length
1.
"Hands Down"
3:31
2.
"What She Will"
5:04
3.
"Pine"
4:52
4.
"Certain Muse"
2:59
5.
"Hardly Believe"
4:34
6.
"Graveyard"
3:25
7.
"Rope-a-Dope"
2:58
8.
"Leave Home"
6:08
9.
"Betwixt"
4:27
10.
"Silver Solace"
10:39
Personnel
Tim Harris – bass, vocals
Tara Key – guitars, vocals
Josh Madell – drums, vocals
References
^Trouble Girls: The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock. Random House. 1997. p. 433.
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