ENIAC has records; people want them. That's why--nearly a year and a half after their last show--ENIAC is back to introduce the album All That's Left of Us and play a series of farewell shows for the people who encouraged them to return. But this is not a record just for fans. Anyone who appreciates tense, well-spoken emotions backed by solid musicianship can appreciate this album.
The 10 songs and a bonus track start with the quiet, delicate guitar work of “Rebuilding Year” and the high-strung, but catchy “Skeleton Crew.” Jason Buntz (guitar), Mike Fonseca (drums), Nathan McGehee (guitar and vocals) and Mark
Sonnabaum (bass, vocals, piano, Rhodes piano and string arrangements) pack a lot into their (mainly) less-than-five-minute songs, combining complicated guitar with a tight rhythm section and candid lyrics with a undercurrent of sadness and regret. On “Rhode Island,” McGehee sings “I promise you the world/It's 1/10th, what I'm delivering/It's like giving you Rhode Island in comparison.” The sense of defeat and destruction that plays out song by song isn't just words on paper sung into a mic. It's ENIAC's story.
The title All That's Left of Us is fitting: This album, 10 tracks long, is all that remains of ENIAC. The band hasn't played since Fall 2003. These songs--some dating back to the band's founding in 1999--were first self-recorded and completed in 2001, only to be scrapped and re-recorded over the first seven months of 2002 with Casey Diiorio in Dallas' Valve Studios, then mixed in September of the same year with Ed Rose at Red House Studio / Black Lodge Recording in Eudora, Kansas. The album's been ready since it was mastered in 2003. But the band disintegrated, and the album was shelved.
Meanwhile they considered renaming it Things Fall Apart. Not just because of the literary nerd quotient of using the title of the Chinua Achebe novel--c'mon, this is a band named after the first all-electronic computer--but because that's what happened to ENIAC. Things fell apart. Not all at once; bit by bit. ENIAC eroded over time. One drop of water, then another, building to a trickle, then a stream, until finally there was a canyon, a big gaping hole where solid earth once stood. Promises were broken, deals fell through, others just dissolved, big talk turned to silence, friends lost touch, opening gigs on big tours went to other bands. Adding insult to injury, the band members never all lived in the same city; often separated by hours. Even now, half are in Denton, half in Austin. And it all ate away.
But at least All That's Left of Us is out now. It's a shame that the band fell apart. But at least there's this last recorded document from this talented band. ENIAC should have gone a lot further and, if you listen, you'll see why. It's like the ending of “Sorry This Sounds Terrible”: “You'd think I'd learn my lesson: Sink to learn to swim.” The band ended 18 months ago, but this album shows that ENIAC had finally found its voice.