The Mendoza Line

During the summer of 1995, Athens, GA-based indie pop group the Mendoza Line came together through singer/guitarists Timothy Bracy and Peter Hoffman, who had grown up together in McLean, VA, joined by Paul Deppler and Margaret Maurice. Andres Galdames and Lori Carrier rounded out the initial roster, a name chosen to honor former major leaguer Mario Mendoza whose .215 career batting average marked the lowest threshold a player could sustain before facing demotion.

Emerging from the remains of the local Athens group the Incompetones, the band secured a deal with Kindercore and delivered its 1997 debut Poems to a Pawnshop, an album driven by a brisk indie rock energy distinct from the understated pastoral tone of the subsequent EP Like Someone in Love. Shannon McArdle came aboard ahead of the 1999 release I Like You When You're Not Around, an album that coincided with the ensemble's shift from Georgia to Brooklyn, NY. Spring 2000 brought We're All in This Alone, the first project issued on Bar/None, after which Maurice departed. Two years on, the more seasoned and stylistically diverse Lost in Revelry appeared. The year 2003 saw the reissue of the band's inaugural album If They Knew This Was the End. Fortune arrived via Cooking Vinyl in 2004, while Misra put out Full of Light and Full of Fire the following year. In 2006 guitarist Clint Newman and drummer Adam Gold assumed live-performance roles, and the refreshed configuration entered the studio in 2007 to record the final album 30 Year Low prior to the group's dissolution.