I know, I know.  What right do I have to declare this album a “classic”, when chances are you haven’t ever heard of Visqueen?  Well, I’ll admit that even I had no recollection of them until a few months ago when I stumbled upon this band that apparently was a beloved local Seattle act for most of the ’00s, but somehow managed to completely pass me by.  Thankfully, I spend a lot of time listening to another dependable Seattle institution, indie radio station KEXP, and apparently they still play enough Visqueen that I was able to hear one of their songs over the airwaves and be compelled to ask, “What is this?  It’s awesome.”  This ultimately led to me down a rabbit hole of seeking out all three of Visqueen’s albums, which weirdly are a lot easier to find in real life than on the internet, or at least if you have easy access to a Seattle record store’s used CD section.  Yet even despite Visqueen’s local favoritism, in it’s heyday the band never quite managed to latch on to the early ’00s indie-pop boom that birthed a lot of successful Northwest bands, and thus has kept them pretty obscure in the wake of their 2011 break-up.  But maybe that was all for the best, since it gives every album in Visqueen’s impeccably solid discography the amiable sound of an underdog that you just can’t keep down. Continue reading →