
From the album The Monstrous Vanguard Time was, an indie rock band would catch more than a few sideways stares for enlisting a – gasp! – string player. So sacrosanct was the gilded less-is-more template favored by the genre's progenitors (one more time with feeling, Malkmus, Marsch, etc.) violinist and cellists made a band seem bloated, seem like grubby over-reachers. But that was then, back before the likes of Kittens Ablaze (and contemporaries Ra Ra Riot, Cursive, etc.) proved that indie rock wasn't [...]