InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 10

FILM REVIEWS
of Charles Peterson's work, and of course, a gallery of talking
heads, including Chicago music legend Steve Albini of the
aforementioned Big Black, former 120 Minutes host Matt Pinfield,
and surviving Material Issue members Mike Zelenko and Ted
Ansani.
The power trio blazed the trail for bands like Green Day and
Superdrag to find success in the mid-'90s, and editor Cara Myers
makes good use of the (often grainy) footage to evoke the
atmosphere that pervaded the culture of the early '90s. There are
the obligatory mentions of grunge, Nirvana, and the Seattle
scene, but a clip of Dennis Miller introducing the band on his
show — bobbing his mulleted head while proclaiming, "The gals
love them," to an enthusiastic studio audience — feels more
authentically of the time than rehashing the early-'90s
alternative rock explosion for the umpteenth time. Out of Time
wisely keeps the Seattle-adjacent talk to a minimum, putting the
equally vibrant Chicago music scene at center stage. Even so,
Schneider doesn't interrogate the band's place within that scene,
which was often fraught with tensions and conflicting ambitions
— and a band as eager to shoot for superstardom as Material
Issue must have ruffled at least a few feathers.
The documentary's title derives from the group's status as "a
band out of time," as one of the interviewees so aptly puts it,
their '70s-inspired guitar pop seemingly at odds with both
grunge's metallic thrum and the shruggy lo-fi production values
of their contemporaries like Liz Phair and Sebadoh. As is the
case for most documentaries focused on not-as-famous-as-
Nirvana alternative and indie groups — Silkworm's Couldn't You
Wait, Slint's Breadcrumb Trail, even Mudhoney's I'm Now fits that
bill — Out of Time doesn't stray too far from the well-trodden
indie documentary path, telling the story in a relatively
straightforward, surprisingly conservative way. Sure, trying to
impart actual history makes formal experimentation difficult, but
it remains surprising that we've yet to see a lower-budget,
after-the-fact documentary attempt to mirror its subject's
musical sensibilities.
It might be unfair to expect an exuberant, raucous take on the
Material Issue story, given that their journey ended with their
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