Albums by this artist

The Big Dig (1999)

Billy Mahonie

The Big Dig

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» MARK T.R. DONOHUE | STAFF WRITER

Billy Mahonie The Big Dig Too Pure, 1999 RiYL: Tortoise, The Mercury Program

Like the Mercury Program album from a few months ago, I recognized Billy Mahonie's The Big Dig immediately as Tortoise lite. And like the Mercury Program album, I still liked it. You know what? The Tortoise model works. Modal instrumental rock with solid rock drumbeats and gradually developing guitar and bass melodies is fun to listen to. There are enough instrumental outfits around now that we're just going to have to deal with the fact that some of them sound like each other. Notice the similarities, but focus on the songs.

The Big Dig has plenty of good ones. The best tracks, like the opening "Watching People Speaking When You Can't Hear What They're Saying" and the closing "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah," are rock songs, nothing post- about them, and they work splendidly. Listening to Billy Mahonie, I wonder why more bands don't do this sort of medium-edged, vaguely classic-rock influenced instrumental thing. It's really effective. Then I remember Five Style. Why weren't Five Style huge? Oh yeah, they were on Sub Pop.

"We Accept American Dollars" is a lovely bass-driven swing number, even if all of its songwriting royalties should be going directly to Doug McCombs. "Manywhere" (which for some reason occurs twice, in versions differing only in length) adds an acoustic guitar to the palette. "Glenda" very much wishes it was a song on the first Slint album, but it sounds nice here too.

Instrumental rock, like its vocal cousin, is a field full of imitators and short on innovators. The instrumental strain, however, is still novel enough that a well-executed album like The Big Dig can be commendable despite not being terribly innovative. Maybe they're lucky for getting on the bandwagon while the sound is still fresh, but Billy Mahonie have made an enjoyable record.

MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.