The Plastic Constellations - Mazaltan (2004)

[DudeAsInCool]

After issuing the stellar We Got the Movement EP in 1999, which copped everyone from Fugazi to Sonic Youth in a gruff morass of youthful ingenuity, the group followed with an equally impressive debut full-length, Let's War, securing their status as promising post-punk debutantes....Then came a four-year hiatus, as the group's members done and went got some college. That's right: The Plastic Constellations' prodigious early yield was entirely the work of suburban high-schoolers. In an age rife with quixotic minstrels-- the bohemian equivalent of varsity football stars-- and lead guitarists with three-CD vocabularies, The Plastic Constellations were refined beyond their years. What's more, Let's War and We Got the Movement contained the kind of unbridled enthusiasm that usually trumps technical prowess, lyrical substance, and songwriting inventiveness in teenagers' judgments of the next local emo band.

Alas, if only the patrons of Hopkins, Minnesota's underground music scene knew how lucky they were. Mazatlan, the group's emergent comeback, is full of universal qualities, but perhaps most importantly, it transports the listener back to the cozy early days of music fandom, when finding a record you loved was an episodic event, and one or two songs could occupy an entire afternoon.

-Sam Ubl, June 29th, 2004

You can read the full review at Pitchfork:

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-revie.../mazatlan.shtml