These Texans began as the Dig, but were forced to yield the moniker to some other faceless young band vying for four of those all-important 120 Minutes on MTV. Seed got theirs with a nonsensical day-glo video for “Rapture” — a sweet, sundrenched ditty that falls somewhere between Blind Melon and Boston, with shrill harmonies and a piston rhythm guitar riff. But once you get past the vocal similarities to Brad Delp (or was that Sib Hashian?), Seed doesn’t add up to much more than the quartet’s calculatingly understated photographs (standard-issue flowing manes and flannel for the back cover; thrift shop Edwardian for the booklet). This is album-rock for the post-alternative universe. Singer/bassist Chadwick Salls’ lyrics drip with both flowery positivism and awkwardly dark religiosity, with one song (“Kids…This Is Fabulon”) paying hip tribute to Katherine Dunn’s novel Geek Love. The sound is a yeoman’s mish-mash of ’60s effluvia, ’70s genericism, ’80s heartland-grunge and ’90s faux-funk weirdness. But in the year after ling‘s release lots of bands had insinuating one-hits that were no less moronic than “Rapture.” So take pity on Seed. They could have been Sponge. They could have been Better Than Ezra or Deep Blue Something. Perhaps it’s some consolation that the other Dig didn’t fare any better.
Salls and Seed guitarist Dean Truitt formed a new quartet, Color, in 1998.