Though Raleigh, NC's Vanilla Trainwreck was named after a local ice cream parlor's specialty sundae, the quartet avoids the sweet pop jangle of most of their early-'90s area contemporaries (like their labelmates, Dillon Fence). In fact, with their heavily processed guitar sounds, tempos that alternate between the sluggish and the hyper, and Greg Elkins' often anguished vocals, Sofa Livin Dreamazine basically sounds like proto-emo. There's a dark pop sense on display here, with songs like "Grapevine" blending subtly hooky choruses with an overall feel of mild angst. Neither facet of the band's sound predominates over the other, which gives Sofa Livin Dreamazine an odd but productive tension. The star of the album is guitarist and organist Ken Bowers, whose affinity for pleasantly distorted, droning guitar lines gives some of the songs a certain resemblance to mid-period Yo la Tengo. Vanilla Trainwreck never achieved much in terms of either sales or critical attention, but Sofa Livin Dreamazine is a solidly impressive album well-worth searching out. ~ Stewart Mason