I have a genuine bias for this band. True underdogs, resilient to the core, never straying from their original vision and initial inspiration. This disc has the nice addition of some Plasticland-esque organ, and the overall sound is very organic. Alternating vocalist wife and husband plus one busy drummer equals Antietam. Tara Key's voice cuts through like sunshine as always, whichis refreshing in a day and age when female vocalists become more popular the more they sound like infants. This is gutsy rock, and one of the best ever from these Kentucky-NY transplants.
CMJ New Music Monthly, December 1994
Why the heck isn't Antietam famous yet? By all rights, singer/guitarist Tara Key should be internationally acclaimed as the world's greatest girl cock-rocker, and the band's skill at using guitars as power tools should have been rewarded by rock radio airplay and stadium tours years earlier in its almost decade-long career. Suffice it to say, it would be truly tragic if all the folks going nuts over the new feedback-laden REM, excellent as it is, neglect this album. Rope-A-Dope is a concise survey of Antietam's strong points, from terse fire-in-the-belly rants like "Graveyard" to the surprisingly pretty duet "Hardly Believe." Most tracks don't have quite the forward momentum of live Antietam, but they make up for it in intricacy, with long instrumental bridges that end no guitar lick before its time. The lumbering "Leave Home" might inspire comparisons to Slint and other warhorses of the "Louisville sound" but it's redeemed by a distinctive layer of primordial fuzz that keeps you awake. Certain mega-selling power-popsters ought to listen to Rope-A-Dope - they might learn a thing or two about country feedback.
Andrea MoedBack to the top of the page
Quite honestly, there aren't many bands left that can always sound this original. Tara Key, Tim Harris and Josh Madell have proven to the world that great rock bands can come from Kentucky and not sound like Lynyrd Skynyrd. Tara Key's neopunk, straightforward vocals feed their fiery musical soul that burns like a guitar left on the cutting room floor of a great Neil Young album. Oh yes - these are wild things indeed.
Tight and crunchy are two essential words for an accurate description of Antietam. Although they've recorded five studio albums isnce 1985, they've never received the attention they deserve, except perhaps in the music [ress. Will Rope-A-Dope be the groundbreaker for them? The brash, electric agony of "Hardly Believe" comes close to ecstasy as it reaches deep into the belly of the guitar-beast. In "Certain Muse" they play hopscotch with time signatures. A perverse sense of rapture in "Hands Down," the album opener, is accented by bizzare chords and a surprise appearance on organ by Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo. And the stunning "Graveyard" made me realise that there are no high and low plateaus on this record, just an endless stream of furious, groovy abandon.
Be forewarned. You may swoon, this shit is so good. You will, no doubt, have to listen again and again just to be certain you believe that music this good is still made!
Holly EnnistBack to the top of the page
CMJ New Music Report, November 1994
Antietam's sound is the unholy spawn of a cheap one-night stand between three-chord 60's garage-rock sludge and Neil Young at his most aggressive. Now imagine this wayward child taken in by Lower East Side hepsters and weaned on the first two Velvet Underground records, the Patti Smith Group and Television. On Rope-A-Dope (the band's sixth LP), Antietam's garage-punk roots are still prominent, but the trio's artsy craftsy leanings and innate inventiveness take those roots to strange, mostly unfamiliar terrain. "Silver Solace," for example, is a 10-minute-plus epic built around a rudimentary chord progression with no real chorus, but its shrewd use of dynamics and feedback keeps boredom at bay, while the sparse, haunting "Leave Home" recalls the Birthday Party's "Jennifer's Veil" until it erupts with a phenomenal, noisy solo by guitarist Tara Key. Key is one of the fiercest guitar players around, taking volume, feedback and the visceral anti-technique of Neil Young to places most are too yellow to tread. But, more importantly, her expressive use of dark, gutteral power chords and stinging jabs of high-pitched melody are what propels most of these tunes forward and makes them memorable. Cuts: "Certain Muse", "Graveyard" (a Dead Moon cover) and "Hardly Believe."
Steve McGuirlBack to the top of the page
One of the more (unjustly so) ignored bands emanating from the Hoboken/NYC stable, Antietam has been making subtly great minor chord, bastard-child guitar music since the mid-80's, and have now come through with their most mature, confident and (what a surprise) best record to date. Rope-A-Dope is the sixth album from the dynamic duo of Tara Key and Tim Harris, and it seers with heaps and waves of Key's grating, booming guitar wrapped around off-center grooves.
Comparisons to the pop-noise drone of compadres Yo La Tengo (Ira Kaplan adds an organon "Hands Down") are inevitable, but while YLT revels in a Velvets-Kinks pot haze, Antietam concentrates on a somewhat more crazed Crazy Horse tack (apples and oranges, right?). (If we're playing the comparisons game, think of a more art-damaged, less rambling Eleventh Dream Day and that comes closer.) Tara Key's frenetic guitar tricks are the highlight here - she sounds like Neil Young's angry little sister - especially on the meandering, careening "Leave Home" and on the over-the-top stomp of "Betwixt." Elsewhere, there's more beautiful (albeit aching) guitar melodies, and still more over-the-top stomps. One of the most solid "albums" (i.e. continuous 55 minutes of listening) of the year. Guitar-drenched bliss.
Jerry DannemillerBack to the top of the page
Ten years on, Antietam, one of indie-rock's longest lived trios, is still a force to be reckoned with, still vastly underappreciated, and still an inspiration. And Rope-A-Dope is one of the group's finest, launching into a fierce, garagey frenzy from the get-go with "Hands Down" (Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan guests on organ) before spinning forth nine more wonderfully mesmerizing songs.
Tara Key is a fantastic, diverse and lyrical guitarist (and songwriter) whose aggressive, crazed live work is matched here on sonic blasts like "Hardly Believe," "Betwixt," the Dead Moon cover "Graveyard," and "What She Will." Still, Key's subtle complexity shines on "Silver Solace," the title track, the trembling "Pine" and the nimble "Certain Muse."
While Key often gets the lion's share of credit in the band, her husband/bassist Tim Harris (who brings a tender cello to these sessions) is as impeccable as ever, and his co-vocals with Key are truly special. Drummer Josh Madell (he's spent time with Codeine) completes the understated yet powerful rhythm squad.
In ten years, they haven't hopped bandwagons, they haven't been hype-driven, and they haven't released anything close to a poor album. Antietam is imminently likeable, palpably explosive, and positively vibrant. With all the artists they get compared to - from Neil Young to Yo La Tengo; from the Velvets to Sonic Youth - it's strange the trio is still what could be called a "best kept secret."
Mark Woodlief