There’s a relentlessly brooding power and bruised melodicism emanating from the Pack A.D.’s sixth full-length, Positive Thinking (Cadence), that belies the album’s cheery self-help title. Drummer Maya Miller admits that she and guitarist Becky Black intended a certain irony in the LP’s nomenclature. “It’s facetiously hopeful, which pretty much sums up our band.” says Miller. The Pack A.D. has always been foundationally blues based, with a detour into poppier territory on Do Not Engage. Over the past few albums, though, the band actively shifted toward psych rock, a major thread in the fabric of Positive Thinking. Miller will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our feature on the band.
Miller: OK, so if you’ve been reading my posts and have garnered anything about me by now, it’s that I have a bit of a love for ’80s and ’90s TV shows. One of the highlights in watching these bygone-era programs is that invariably, they have an episode where either: a) the main character learns how to use a computer; b) the main character investigates a mysterious death or deaths that turn out to be somehow orchestrated by a computer gone evil; c) there is a support character who effuses how computers are the wave of the future and the main character is skeptical. Oh, and in the case of Murder She Wrote, I am pretty sure there have been all three scenarios plus the added delight of having Jessica Fletcher piece together how the cord from the computer runs into the telephone and sends information to another computer … in a completely different place!
