| Rope-a-Dope | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Antietam |
| Cover: | Rope-a-Dope (Antietam album).jpg |
| Released: | 1994 |
| Genre: | Indie rock |
| Label: | Homestead[1] |
| Producer: | Lyle Hysen, Antietam |
| Prev Title: | Antietam Comes Alive! |
| Prev Year: | 1992 |
| Next Title: | Victory Park |
| Next Year: | 2004 |
Rope-a-Dope is an album by the American indie rock band Antietam, released in 1994.[2] It is named for the boxing technique.[3] The band supported the album with a North American tour.[4]
The album was produced by Lyle Hysen and Antietam.[5] Ira Kaplan contributed to the album's opening track, "Hands Down".[4] Rope-a-Dope includes a cover of Dead Moon's "Graveyard".
Trouser Press thought that "as borne out by songs like the gently psychedelic 'Pine', [Tara] Key has settled into a wafting lower register that accentuates the spooky qualities of her voice; she's also found a way to channel some of her manic onstage attack."[6] Entertainment Weekly deemed "Hands Down" "a wonderfully propulsive, guitar- and organ-driven bucket of noise." The Washington Post opined that "Key's piercing guitar lines are the group's trademark, yet the gentle, [Tim] Harris-sung 'Hardly Believe' has the album's most memorable tune."[7]
Greil Marcus, in Artforum, noted that Key and Harris "can't sing," but wrote that "every time you’re about to give up on this music, Key summons a passage on her instrument that does sing."[8] Guitar Player praised Key's "spectacularly distorted tone that's exuberantly trashy yet retains razor-edged definition."[9]
AllMusic called the album "an unjustly overlooked piece of mid-'90s indie rock," writing that the "high point, and possibly the best thing Antietam ever did, is the 11-minute closer 'Silver Solace', which builds and ebbs with structural grace and contains some of Key's most remarkable singing and soloing."