The song titles on 45 Spiders' Standard Forms of Communication are a little alarming: "Carter Stanley or Jacques Lacan?" and "Naomi Yang's Thoughts on Bass and Life Parallel My Own" would seem to be heftier loads than most indie rock songs can bear. But then words don't really matter too much to this local trio. Peter Vidito's scraping, surging guitar is usually up front, and on songs like "All Souls' Day" his vocals virtually meld with the strum.

Like many indie rock outfits, the Spiders value timbre over melody and tension over release. Still, this album is not all mid-tempo brooding. The trio does hit the accelerator sometimes, usually for songs about its obsession - indie rock itself. "Club Anthem" is not exactly anthemic, but the self-reflexive road song ("Tell your friends to check us out next time we play") does have a chugging vitality, while "Another Polvo Song" captures the excitement of hearing someone else's great tune. Naturally, it invokes a neo-prog rock band that also favors sonics over songs.

The Spiders also appear on Paint With Sound, an aptly titled sampler from the trio's label, Deep Reverb. At least on this disc, these 10 impressionistic bands seem entirely compatible. Typically, the combine plangent guitar, a yearning tenor and a song that's pensive yet straining at the epic. That describes the Spiders' "Lolo Already," 5 State Drive's "Sums" and Zoothead's "Shudder." Some modest exceptions are Brilliantine's "Just Fails," which employs a jazzy rhythm and a persistent and cymbal and Charming's sprightly "Mississippi," which replaces the tenor with soprano. The result is a collection that's pleasant and so cohesive that it might have benefited from a little heterodoxy.

-- Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post

When 45 Spiders guitarist-vocalist Peter Vidito isn't playing, recording, or buying music, he's releasing it. His label, Deep Reverb, has released records by Zoothead as well as a compilation 7 inch (Betting Man's Hand) and Standard Forms of Communication, the debut CD from his own band. Music, independent or otherwise, is a main concern of Vidito, his bassist wife Cathy, and drummer Ferdinand Osorio.

"All of us are unapologetic indie rock fanboys (and girls). Cathy and I sink much coin into our expanding record collection, and Ferdinand's buying tons of stuff from Vinyl Ink every weekend, it seems. With us, it's just music, music, music all the friggin' time. It's so pathetic," says Vidito, in true self-deprecating indie-pop fashion.

Polvo, Galaxie 500, the Wedding Present, the Stanley Brothers, the Meters, and Captain Beefheart are all referenced by Vidito on the album. "Since [indie music is] what we love, those themes just seem to leak into the lyrics," he explains. "I personally find indie-alterna-underground-whatever-ya-wanna-call-it music simultaneously crucial and disposable. I feel very Lester Bangs about rock 'n' roll as a whole: It's an often dumb and pointless commodity, but I couldn't imagine a life without it."

The band's name refers to "those little yellow adapters that fit into the center holes of 45 singles... They're vaguely arachnoid-looking, and I've always called 'em spiders. Voila... a name the confounds [listeners] and alludes to that most vaunted archetype of indie rock: the 7-inch single!" Vidito says, driving his obsession home.

With 45 Spiders, Jenhitt, Charming, and the Others, there's a small but growing number of groups returning to the style of indie-pop that redefined the city's music scene a few years ago, moving it away from the Dischord sound.

"When Cathy and I moved here [from Hawaii] in the spring of '94, I felt like we had brushed up against the tail end of that unbelievable early-90's pop explosion - you know, Unrest, Velocity Girl, Tsunami, the whole Slumberland thing - and then it seemed to have tapered off a bit. We were kind of depressed," he says. "Great bands had taken a breather or had broken up, and great venues, like the old 9:30 Club and d.c. space, called it quits. Artistically and emotionally, the city seemed very cold. Things seem to be bubbling up right now, though. There's a whole heap of great local bands out there doing their thang."

-- Christopher Porter, Washington City Paper

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