Is Chicago underrated? Reading The Adventures of Augie March and listening to The Biz has me missing the Windy City, a feeling that was only amplified by a recent conversation I had with a gray-haired hipster dude at a Spellling show in Oakland. The guy was from Chicago and mentioned that Jeff Parker from Tortoise used to DJ some of the clubs he went to. Cue nostalgia for an era I never experienced!

Hipster mecca as it is (the home of Pitchfork!), Chicago in the early 90s found singer/guitarist Sam Prekop fronting the indie band Shrimp Boat. This great Pitchfork article notes that at the venue Lounge Ax in Lincoln Park, “Shrimp Boat played, according to [Doug] McCombs [of Tortoise], ‘this totally skronky, weird, idiosyncratic music with pop songs on top of it. They probably played like two shows a week and it felt like they were doing a completely new set of material each time they played.'”

When Shrimp Boat dissolved, Sam Prekop and SB bassist Eric Claridge formed The Sea and Cake with Tortoise’s John McEntire on drums and Archer Prewitt on guitar. Prekop hopped back into the local live circuit with the new band and they recorded and released three albums in the span of two years, The Biz being the third. Of the album, Prekop later said, “This one was recorded live, and I think we had worked out most of the tunes to play live, and that makes it different. We’d done shows with those songs before we’d put them on the record…and I think that’s the last time we worked that way… The way the songs arrived at that point was totally mysterious. Especially the song, ‘The Biz’… I still marvel at the bizarre chord progressions.”

Live and mysterious, yes, The Biz has that charming bookish 90s indie band style going for it from the jump. I’m surprised at how long it took for me to listen to The Sea and Cake given that I like them more than some of their contemporaries, other bands that are too dense/noisy or have bad vocals. Since you could apply the adjectives “chill” and “jammy” to a bunch of this, it makes perfect sense that I enjoy it. But I do think TSaC have an appeal broader than their popularity reflects, especially today when all their albums are available at the touch of a button. You could put on “Station in the Valley” at a laidback outdoor function and no one would bat an eye. And “The Transaction” resounds with the kind of sunny chords that populate some of the bigger Alex G songs.

That live recording/feeling Prekop mentioned translates here and the band sounds really tight. They’re also using EML-101 and ARP 2600 synths for an added dimension of sound. The band’s been labeled post-rock, but what they’re doing here doesn’t feel overly complicated or even dramatic. It’s not like it’s one-note either: “Darkest Night” is quite relaxing and “Escort”, two tracks later, is angular and noisy. File The Biz in with your overlooked indie rock records, and jam out.

Listen to The Biz here.