AZURE RAY

VANITIES

This month THE ROCK SNOB'S DICTIONARY VOLUME 4 GEORGE WAYNE MEETS SIMON LE BON Plus: ED COASTER GETS PHOTOGRAPHED, AND MORE!

PROVENANCE: Birmingham, Alabama. THAT WAS THEN: As high-schoolers, Orenda Fink (standing) and Maria Taylor, both now 27, were ballsy chicks with guitars who played in a power-pop band called little Red Rocket— and each has a rocket tattoo on her forearm to prove it. THIS IS NOW: Life (relationship problems) and circumstances (a cotton-to-corn shift in geography from Alabama, via Athens, Georgia, to the current indie-rock mecca of Omaha, Nebraska) triggered a mood swing and a name change. BUT DON'T CALL THEM EMO: "We started writing songs that were almost morbidly sad to make us feel better," says Fink brightly. Three albums later (their latest, Hold on Love, is out this month on Omaha label Saddle Creek) and the girls have found their place making orchestral-tinged ballads that rise above being simply grounding but fall short of propulsively upbeat. NO DEPRESSION: "I'm more prolific when I'm sad," says Taylor, but the girls are not committed to irresolvable introversion; they've been known to fall into helpless giggling fits onstage and get drunk and smash the crockery To go from playing sugar pop in Georgia to delicate rock in the polka ballrooms of Omaha was an accident of fate, but it's still been an odd transition, concedes Fink. "We're into relief. We're not sad depressives. We like to get it out "

EDWARD HELMORE

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