90 Day Men

90 Day Men‘s members have been reading above and beyond the required works on the indie-rock syllabus. Taking its name from a turn of phrase in Samuel Yochelson’s The Criminal Personality, which characterizes offenders who have yet to undergo psychiatric evaluation, the group started in a St. Louis basement in 1995. After five years, a handful of singles and a move to Chicago, 90 Day Men dropped its first full-length, the parenthetically generous (It (Is) It) Critical Band. Hailed as a breakthrough in the even-then monotonous math-rock niche, that disc scored a place on Spin Online’s Top 20 of 2000. This year’s lists aren’t out yet, but it’s likely critics will be kind to To Everybody, a collection of cryptic epics filled with unlikely grooves, nomadic guitar lines and sleepwalking vocals.