Album Review: 1992-2001 by Acetone

Acetone didn’t go completely unnoticed in their time. Formed at the back end of grunge in 1992, they were packed off on support tours for The Verve, Spiritualized and Oasis over the following years, though none of those audiences were likely to embrace the bucolic subtlety of their foraging guitar music. They were a three-piece without a natural frontman, a band who sang in hushed tones or else none at all.

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It was easy to lose sight of a band like Acetone. Even as the 1990s indie-rock universe splintered into myriad distinct niches, Acetone slipped through them all like water flowing through rocks. They were too rootsy to be shoegazers, too woozy to be alt-country, too classic rock for slowcore, too casually Californian to be mere Velvet Underground revivalists.

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Despite its often spellbinding beauty, Acetone’s subdued sound must have been a hard sell in a Nirvana- and grunge-obsessed musical landscape: there are no distortion pedals being abused on these 16 tracks, many (possibly too many for newcomers hoping for a Best Of. . .

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Weird though it sounds, being signed wasn’t always the great aim for a US band after The Year That Punk Rock Broke (1991). Whether you were being signed to a vanity label, swept up by a desperate major or (whisper it) actually talented, you would have been gleefully swept up in the grunge cull and don’t we all like Gene now luv a duck cor blimey doncha know. Many a decent band got lost in the fire but Light In The Attic are on a welcome mission to right said wrongs in the case of Los Angeles trio Acetone. A Velvets-lined mix of 90s slowcore and country soul, between 1993 and 2001 they released four LPs.

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Acetone were an LA band, functioning in the years indicated by this compilation's title, and their music is some of the most special, yet spectrally lost music of the 90s. Guitarist Mark Lightcap, bassist Richie Lee and drummer Steve Hadley played together in Acetone (and the band Acetone emerged from, the scuzz-rock Spinout) for a total of 15 years, disbanding in July 2001 when Lee committed suicide in the garage next to the house where the trio practised. Their ending created few waves, neither did their music in any typical sense of 'success' - with typically reverse-Midas skills I gave 'Come On' single of the week in Melody Maker but didn't read much else about them anywhere.

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Ty Dolla Sign feat. Jeremih, “Dawsin’s Breek” (Warner Bros.). The newest track from the Compton R&B singer’s eagerly anticipated third installment of the “Beach House” series is themed as a kind of victory lap, but not in a rub-it-in-your-face way. Rather, the magnetic crooner born Ty Griffin Jr., who has risen to become both a go-to hip-hop collaborator and R&B heartthrob, harnesses a beat crafted by hit-maker Mike Will Made It to make a joyous ode to fresh success. It arrives on the heels of an early September teaser, “So Am I,” which features a reggae-inspired Skrillex beat and a cameo by Damian Marley.

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