Rob Crow

San Diego-based singer and multi-instrumentalist Rob Crow maintains an unusually high output across a wide stylistic range, dividing his efforts among projects such as Pinback, Thingy, Goblin Cock, Optiganally Yours, Alpha Males, Physics, and Snotnose. His occasional solo discs stand out as especially peculiar even by the standards of this idiosyncratic indie and math rock figure.

Crow first appeared publicly as one member of the quartet Heavy Vegetable, whose debut EP A Bunch of Stuff by Heavy Vegetable surfaced in 1993. After the band dissolved in 1995, he and Heavy Vegetable vocalist Elea Tenuta formed Thingy almost at once. During that same period he issued his earliest solo material as half of a split CD with art noise electronica artist Lesser; his contribution comprised twenty-five extremely brief tracks, mostly instrumental, three of them recorded with the side project Fantasy Mission Force. Fantasy Mission Force later released its own EP, Circus Atari, in 1997.

Crow’s first complete solo album, Lactose Adept, arrived in 1996. More splintered than his share of the Lesser split, the record presents thirty strange song fragments lasting anywhere from seven seconds to seven minutes, more than half of them under two minutes. His handwritten liner notes state that the pieces were captured on a four-track cassette deck inside the apartment next to the one he shared with Tenuta, using equipment owned by Heavy Vegetable bassist Travis Nelson. Nothing about Lactose Adept escapes oddity, from the music itself to the eccentric cover that reworks an Ernest Shepard drawing taken from a Winnie the Pooh book.

Crow next formed the duo Optiganally Yours with Pea Hix, who played the Optigan—an inexpensive 1960s home keyboard that reproduces sounds stored on discs—while Crow sang. The pair issued two albums: the Optigan-only Spotlight on Optiganally Yours in 1997 and Optiganally Yours Presents Exclusively Talentmaker in 2000, the latter assembled from the timbres of other obsolete home keyboards. Three additional Crow solo releases followed: My Room Is a Mess in 2003, Living Well in 2007, and the I Hate You Rob Crow EP.