12 RODS - What are they?#

12 RODS is a fascinating band with an interesting story. Forming in Oxford, Ohio, originally under the name “Ryan’z Bihg Head”¹, the band would form for a one-off school performance in 1992 before eventually disbanding. The band eventually reformed as 12 RODS in July that same year, and would go on to independantly release their first proper cassette, Bliss. Consisting of frontman Ryan Olcott, drummer Christopher McGuire, bassist Matt Flynn, and guitarist Daniel Burton-Rose, the band would go on to create a series of 5 studio albums, an EP², and a legacy as a forgotten pillar of the midwest indie rock scene in the 90s. Except for the fact Burton-Rose left almost immediately in 1992, so Ryan’s brother Ev had to step in. Oopsies!

Between a colourful history and a rich discography, 12 RODS has become one of my favourite bands of all time. I intend to discuss both aspects here, to illustrate the sound and context of this wonderful hidden gem of a band.
What is the sound of 12 RODS, you may ask?

tl;dr: It’s brilliant.

Let’s dive in.

Bliss - humble, powerful origins#

As far as alternative indie releases go, Bliss is pretty up there. Listen to it here.

Serving as the band’s fledgling release, this album serves as a mighty impressive effort - an entire release thrown together and produced by about 5 people that still holds up today.
The band established it’s dense indie sound with a welcome alternative twinge in the form of interesting guitar layering and occasional intrusions from other instruments. The dense instrumentation layered with Olcott’s emotive vocal style create quite the force, and with the unique approach to harmony atop that, you find that 12 RODS has created something truly, utterly special. With notable warbles across genre-space, the band is unafraid to experiment while still retaining a core sound.
The tracklisting features several highlights, especially Stella, a bass-heavy classic that would worm its way into nigh-on all of the band’s live setlists. That track serves as a beautiful opener to the 12 RODS sound and it starts with just that smooth, thumping bass rhythm. The writing style of Olcott becomes apparent from the very first tracks - the disjointed yet somehow very smooth harmony, the caterwaulish yet somehow deeply emotive vocals, all of these emerged from Bliss as stylistic hallmarks of Olcott’s writing.

There are, of course, low points - sometimes the band’s experimentation goes a little too far - but the highs certainly cover for it, including some heavier-than-expected moments from tracks like ‘Megabright’ and the titular ‘Bliss’ serving as deeply impactful and almost surprising dives. It is not an unfair assessment to call Bliss one of 12 RODS’ darkest efforts. Its slightly unpolished sound in combination with a slightly more heavy writing style creates a very specific gloom, while still allowing the sun to shine through when desired. The release demonstrates that Olcott is perfectly capable of pulling a song’s emotions in whichever way he wants to - unfortunately, sometimes that direction is ‘Mr. Whipple’. Seriously, that song is some tonal whiplash. To place that after the title track is nothing short of criminal.

Following the release of Bliss, the band undertook a transition to being a more serious band. This caused the departure of Flynn, who’s short tenure brought us tracks that still groove to this very day. He would be replaced by Matthew Foust in 1994.

Overall rating: 7.5/10. Very strong start for the band. Can they keep it up?

gay? - yeah, goddamn, they can keep it up#

Goddamn this EP’s good. Listen to it here.

gay? is the band’s second effort, and serves as their first release after moving to Minneapolis. Its rerelease on V2 in 1996 makes it their first true label release.
Channeling 90s shoegaze into 90s alt-rock pulls the listener into a very specific headspace, with the vocal stylings of Olcott delicately decorating the musical landscape very, very well. Atop this is an absurdly powerful rhythm section. The core difference between 12 RODS and a lot of 90s shoegaze-adjacent is the rhythmic stylings of one Christopher McGuire.
This man is a beast.
One listen to ‘Mexico’ from this album will give you a decent synopsis of McGuire’s intensive, chugging style. The intense rhythmic drive is accentuated by the thumping basslines of Foust, creating an extremely formidible rhythm section. The sheer drive of this over the shifting harmonic flavours of Olcott’s writing create a vibrant sonic swaddle to envelop oneself in. Between the country-like twang of ‘Gaymo’, the softened tones of ‘Friend’, and the sheer drive of ‘Mexico’, the range of tones this record produces is nothing short of absurd. Though sometimes disjointed, not maintaining a perfect sonic consistency, this feels more like a formal release than Bliss did. If Bliss is thought of as the demo tape, then this first true release feels about right.

The cultural implications of gay? are important to note. This title, in its era, feels like it may have been poking fun. This couldn’t be more wrong.
The band handles homosexuality with tenderness and grace at a time where being gay was still entering the musical cultural ethos. Eminem was still dropping slurs in his music unapologetically (of course, hip-hop is its own musical culture, but it still speaks to the cultural ethos of the time). To see a band treat queerness as something beautiful, agonising, and potent, much like any love, is a breath of fresh air even today, let alone in the 90s. It feels like its cover depicts - soft and feathery. Handling such complexities with grace and peace. Combine that with the sound mentioned above and you create something close to perfect.

After gay?, the band would sign to V2 Records to craft their next release. Following the tradition set by Flynn, Foust left post-gay? and left a vacant bass spot for 2 years. This gap was filled by touring bassists Tal Tahir (1997) and Aleandro Urzagaste (1998).

This EP received a rare Pitchfork 10/10, though this was later rescinded.

Overall rating: 8.5/10. Continuing to climb. Can they follow up with a solid label debut?

Split Personalities - jesus christ, they’re still improving?!#

Even better. Listen to it here.

Welcome to the late-90s. William Shaw has just joined 12 RODS as a bassist in order to create their new record.
This record would go through a fair amount of processing, even producing an alternate version featuring an unreleased track.³ The creation of the record would see the revitalisation of old material, some released and some not - notably, reworks of Bliss’ ‘I Am Faster’ and gay?’s ‘Red’ & ‘Make-Out Music’. All this coalesced into the tour de force that is Split Personalities.

For a first major label release, this has to be one of the strongest I’ve ever seen. With the intensity increased, the production cleaned up from the more washed-out sound of gay? to a more sharp-edged tone, and Olcott’s vocals more present than ever, this release proved to be a major step forward. The synthesiser begins to enter the band’s sound in full-force, noticable in the very first seconds of the album. The opening track and lead single, ‘Split Personality’, opens with this powerful synth intro, painting in the new sound of this record immediately. Between this and the continuing trend of advanced harmony, this album begins to stand out amongst its peers. Furthermore, the continually impressive rhythm section pulls out all the stops, especially in tracks like ‘Chromatically Declining Me’ and ‘The Stupidest Boy’. Even the unreleased tracks from this era such as ‘Babies’³ (more on these later) are drum-driven and groovy. The tracks merge into each other, bringing exactly what gay? lacked: cohesiveness. This release has a collective sound - it creates an overall experience.

Despite the material reworks, it still feels fresh. gay?’s ‘Red’ continues to be a driving force, but now cleaned up. It transitions into a wonderful new rendition of Bliss’ ‘I Am Faster’, which provokes an almost bossa-nova sound blended with 12 RODS’ usual shoegaze-adjacent tone. The rework of ‘Make Out Music’ loses something - the cleaner production makes the track blend into itself less, becoming a lot less smooth - but it still fits the sound of the album overall. The cohesion does not break. Notably, the track ‘I Wish You Were A Girl’ (the band’s most popular tune) was supposedly written around the time of Bliss, and was certainly performed prior to this album’s release.

On the note of IWYWAG, let’s return to the point of cultural impact. 12 RODS continues to be unapologetically queer, which is especially notable in this song. The lyrics of this track detail a friendship that borders on a relationship, unable to consumate itself due to a perceived ‘wrongness’ to it being a same-sex relationship. This ‘wrongness’ emerges from societal stigma - “I wish you were a girl / For some reason, I don’t know / But someone told me to”. It paints a tragic picture, and outlines this in the harmony and lyricism. The lydian sound creates a subtly off-major sound, a disturbance in what should be happy. Just like the song’s message. It is a poignant message that still rings true today, and demonstrates the band’s social consciousness extremely well.

This release was extremely pleasing to V2 and was critically acclaimed, receiving a spot in Pitchfork’s first “best albums of the 1990’s” list. I am inclined to agree.

Overall rating: 9.5/10. Pretty much perfect. Can they maintain it?

Separation Anxieties - oh no#

Well, there has to be an exception to prove a rule. Listen to it here.

This album was mishandled from the very beginning, with the label breathing down the band’s necks and production from Todd Rundgren being too hands-off for their liking. According to Ev Olcott, “All he would do was press the ‘record’ button and go back to doing crossword puzzles.”⁴ He later stated that he’d sooner re-record the record than reissue it. To make matters worse, the band’s relationship with their drummer collapsed 3 weeks into recording, and the rest of the sessions were purely Ev, Ryan, Bill. It was an intense set of mental pressures to write under, and it shows. I’m setting your expectations now: I’m about to rinse this one a bit.

This release lacks the flavour and punch that 12 RODS are known for. It feels largely dry musically, not exactly aided by the piss-poor production. I mean, Christ, it’s listenable, but every instrument sounds like it’s trying to fight for dominance of your ear at times, and then other times it sounds like the recording was taken on a phone that happened to be in the recording room. While Bliss carried an air of charm with its low-fidelity production style, this release just feels… blegh. Sonically speaking, the instrumentals have been reduced to some very uninspired sounding stuff. There are still highlights - ‘I Think I’m Flying’ is a prime example of instrumental simplicity executed well - but it feels like an overall downgrade.

The lyricism from Olcott on this release is different. It is by no means bad, but they carry less of a message than before. It’s a bit more love-centric. This trend carries on in future releases, with their next album also featuring more simplistic lyricism, though not to the extent of this release. This would be fine if the production of the music backed it up more, which is this instance is simply not true. On the ocassions that Olcott can actually be heard, he’s usually ok, though there are some dicey lyrics in this release. “Sex! / It’s a regular practice” is an absurd lyric to have seriously considered, and it sucks more because it’s unironic. The worst offender on this album is “What Has Happened?”, a track with dry, uninspired lyricism and an instrumental far too simplistic for these alt-indie sweethearts.

So naturally, it’s this album’s lead single.
FFS, 12 RODS. (Mind you, label pressures likely forced this. But still, come on.)

It’s not all bad, but compared to former releases, this is the band’s weakest. There are some highlights - the reworked ‘Repeat’, originally featuring on Bliss, is a nice treat, though it’s still bogged down by Rundgren’s production - but overall, this album is the worst in their catalog. It’s a shame, really. This album reeks of lost potential - it sounds to me like a genuine attempt to write under the immense pressure of both a sophomore release and a shoddy producer, and it is highly unfortunate that it fell so flat. It could’ve been great. But, to be truthful, it’s not that bad. There is a lot of music in this world that is worse than this is. But for a band of this calibre, amongst a discography this giant? This one was a disappointment. I don’t agree with Pitchfork’s 2.0 rating, but this album’s no Bliss.

Unfortunately for the band, V2 was inclined to agree. They were dropped from the V2 roster just after the album’s release, around 2001. McGuire, one of the best drummers I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to, formally left the band. Local Minneapolis drummer Dave King would join the band moving forward. But how do these guys even plan to move forward at all? They’ve had a massive commercial letdown, and they’ve lost their label.

Overall rating: 4.5/10. What now?

Lost Time - the art of the recovery, or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The RODS#

Just when I thought I was out, they reel me back in. Listen to it here.

This album is storied, and was also my introduction to this band. A good friend of mine (my bandmate, as it transpires) linked me to this wonderful video essay about the band shortly after the video had released. After watching it, I listened to this album front-to-back and found myself slowly becoming obsessed. Thus began my descent into an Olcottian madness, and eventually to here. There is a reason this band is first - it inspired this entire blog’s existence.⁵

This release is a tutorial on flourishing in harsh conditions. Forced to go full indie, the band chose to self-produce the record, something Ev Olcott already had decent experience in. This produced the most “pop” sounding 12 RODS album to date, with more synths and almost glitchy-sounding sonic layering that produces a net result of a very bubbly record. The album utilises various transitions between tracks to maintain this sonic atmosphere - with a peculiar intro fading into the gradual crescendo of a track that is ‘Fake Magic 8-Ball’, which itself fades into ‘Twenty Four Hours Ago’, the album feels like it’s compelling you to keep listening. It is a cohesive musical experience. This is aided by the 12 RODS hallmarks - complex harmonic shifting and addictive melodies. King, the band’s new drummer, proves himself to be worthy of the drum throne in this release with extremely good grooves that compliment this slightly poppier sound. This is contrasted by the darker tracks - ‘Summertime Vertigo’ and ‘Lost/Found’ carry an oddly foreboding energy that serves as a much-needed contrast to the rest of the album’s brighter sound.

Olcott’s lyricism is slightly altered as well, complimenting this new sound. His vocal cadence is slightly less strained-sounding, which is another very stylistic decision. Ryan has a tendency to write lyrics that dig into your brain, and they will use any means to get there. Usually, it’s things such as social poignance, or the melodic catchiness of the line. Ocassionally, however, Ryan writes something subtly offputting, and it latches onto your brain that way. Whether this is a bad thing is up to you - I don’t personally mind it so much, but there are some creepy ass lyrics in this release. The song ‘Telephone Holiday’ is the worst offender for one-off dicey lines, such as “Maybe so, baby, you were just the first girl that I found / At the party, which I thought was pretty cool / Little did I know that you were still in high school” which.. wow!⁶ But also, the song does immediately confront the fact its narrator is a bad person, so at least the dicey lines are self-aware. Mind you, there’s a bonus track on the deluxe CD re-release of this album that contains a potentially slightly racially charged lyric. I say potentially because we can’t quite tell what he’s saying anyway.⁷ So… yeah. An odd one for sure.

This release is extremely good work, and a much needed return to form after the less-than-perfect Separation Anxieties. The return to impactful intensive harmony, with explosive production and great melodies to boot, Lost Time is what Separation Anxieties should have been. They briefly gained another guitarist in the form of Jake Hansen in 2002, and King’s drum duties were relinquished to George Marich after King got caught up in touring conflicts circa 2003. Sadly, due to its nature as an indie release, it ended up serving as 12 RODS’ swan song. The band, now suffering from the financial strain of not being signed, dissolved after a final show on the 12th August 2004 at First Avenue.

Just after disbandment, the band released a compilation of all of their material, both released and unreleased, on their website. The band was slapping the nails directly into the coffin.

Overall rating: 8.5/10. 12 RODS is dead. Long live 12 RODS.

But this is not the end of the story. No - 12 RODS aren’t quite done yet.

Accidents Waiting to Happen - a reissue, a recording, and a brief reunion#

2011! The record label Chigliak announce a 12 RODS album is going to be in the label’s first year of vinyl releases, beginning that May. 3 years later, the band announces via Facebook that Chigliak are creating a vinyl reissue of Lost Time for publication in January. That same January? A one-off 12 RODS reunion. Hell yeah! Alongside this, a Kickstarter campaign emerges to fund the creation of a documentary about 12 RODS, which surpassed its goal handily. The documentary Accidents Waiting To Happen (which is pay-to-access and I can’t link here, sadly) detailed the life and times of the band and also recorded the reunion show. The show saw the return of many former members of the band, including Chris McGuire, Dave King, Matt Foust, and many others. The reunion served as a more positive send-off for the band at large, and saw the revival of a lot of old material, including the unreleased ‘Hide Without Delay’.

The curtains close on 12 RODS. The members move along. Ev goes on to play in Halloween, Alaska and co-founds an audio company. William Shaw re-forms his old band, and joins Halloween, Alaska. Dave King and Chris McGuire go on to drum for many a band, with King also joining Halloween, Alaska. Matt Flynn performs in the Queen City Silver Stars. Ryan performs solo as Foodteam and c.Kostra, and then forms a band called Mystery Palace. 12 RODS is dead.

If We Stayed Alive - surprise!#

Long live 12 RODS. Listen to it here.

2021, lockdown. Ryan Olcott begins to listen back on some old 12 RODS demos. They are very good. In fact, Ryan thinks to finish them. He announces his intention to produce a new 12 RODS record on Facebook with “zero help, zero support and zero financing”. He records all of the parts by himself and releases an album that answers the question on Olcott’s mind - what would the music be like if we stayed alive?

The resultant 2023 record answers this question: pretty damn good! These rehashed demos serve as a nice refresh on the 12 RODS sound. The production, entirely done by Olcott, is slightly muddy for my tastes but otherwise very good. This makes total sense, as Ryan had gone on to become a record producer based in Minneapolis. With the sound ocassionally returning to something more akin to pre-Separation style, the production regains its darker timbre. The song ‘Comfortable Situation’ is a brilliant example of this. That track sounds like it could’ve been on Bliss, and the production brings it up to speed with the modern palette compared to the low-fidelity recordings Bliss provides. This release mixes all of the eras of 12 RODS, while keeping the stylistic hallmarks. ‘The Beating’ demonstrates the rich harmonic language of the band, while ‘Hide Without Delay’ (the unreleased First Avenue track) is reminiscent of their lounge moments. The lead single, “My Year (This Is Going To Be) is fantastic - the way it’s written feels like it could come from the Separation Anxieties era, but Ryan is actually competent at producing, so it sounds really damn good.

Olcott had to effectively relearn how to push his voice into 12 RODS range for this release. It pays off. By some miracle, Olcott has retained the vocal timbre he last touched on almost a decade ago. The lyricism reeks of the 12 RODS angst and charm, as expected. Despite being demos, this is still 12 RODS. It’s a miracle this record exists, but it simply did. The cards fell into Olcott’s hands, and he knew how to play them. The only pitfall of this record is that you can tell it’s not fresh. It sounds like it spans their whole history - but it’s not “new” 12 RODS, and you can tell. Is that a bad thing? No, not at all! But it bears mention.

Olcott formed a new band to tour this album with in 2023, consisting of Lars Oslund, Adri Mehra, Alec Tonjes, and Efren Maldonado, who sadly passed unexpectedly last year. The band is continuing to tour even now, with a tour approaching soon.

Overall rating: 7.5/10. So… now what?

CONCLUSION - The Future for 12 RODS#

With ongoing touring, the band seems to still be in full swing. The question now becomes whether or not they can create new material, or if they will continue to tour their old material. Don’t get me wrong - the fact Olcott’s back at it at all is a miracle - but the question still stands. In this modern day and age, can 12 RODS break out of their 90s origins and gain a modern revival? Given their increased modern traction as of the new release, I think it’s possible. But it remains to be seen.

Overall band rating: 8.5/10.#

12 RODS is dead. Long live 12 RODS!