Shake your fist: great 90's post

On a google search for the Archers Of Loaf and the realization that my copy of icky mettle(cassette review copy -eh-hem for jersey beat eons ago), has been long gone for quite some time, I landed on this Chicago hipsters mp3 blog called Shake your fist, his snap-shot of some tracks from a lounge ax benefit cd is a nice little find; including The Apples in Stereo, and a Helium track. His top 2005 list is here and of course some mp3s for evaluation. In general I found a lot bands who's bloggin' buzz peaked my interest, including some newish band called tapes n tapes, whose sound is reminiscent to early pixie meanderings, where there is some guy yapping behind the core of a simple song. One school of my demented pov are transitions: for the best songs should stand on their own via a guitar and melody first, expand with a jam, minor studio layers, and then there is the live execution. An example of this transition theory are in these live Archers of loaf tracks. Where they conciously took lots of risks from the first steps and kept to their guns. For some reason the progress of aol, SY and polvo are hard to find in all this retro lo-fi-rock. 3 steps forward and 2 steps back I suppose is in motion.