Fleetwood Mac, Sonic Youth, Tinfoil. All of them employed a male and female singer. All of them had great lyrics. All of them had a killer guitar player. Only two of the three have millions of fans. Not every band becomes superstars. Some bands are loved by just a handful of people, and these bands tend to be very loved. That’s Tinfoil. I’ve never met a group so talented, yet so humble. I maintain that it’s only a lack of promotion and national distribution that kept them from stardom. I first encountered Tinfoil’s music back in the late 90's, when I was writing for Jam Rag, a Detroit music magazine. Their albums Plastic Lips and Family Tree stayed on the top of my stack of local releases for months. Plastic Lips is their “White Album”. A double length release of varying styles, experimental tracks, and above all, great songs. It’s been said that the lo-fi sound hurts it, but I don’t think a digital 48 track console would serve these songs. Nirvana’s Bleach album wouldn’t sound good produced by Andy Wallace either. The thing about Tinfoil that always impressed me is that whether their live audience is 5 people or 500, they always play their hearts out. Every gig is a big one to them. There’s nothing nonchalant about their live performances. They come to rock you, even if there’s only a half a dozen of you. This quality is shared by groups like Sublime, Mother Love Bone and a few other groups that had small but loyal followings. Luckily for us, nobody in Tinfoil OD’d on heroin. Maybe they’d be even more loved then, but I’d rather they still be here to keep making new music and bringing it to my backyard.
–Tony Romanov