The final entry in Numero Group’s four-set Unwound exploration, compiles the final pair of albums by the Olympia, Washington trio. On 1998’s Challenge For A Civilized Society, the band toyed with conventional verse/chorus form, stacking layers of noise and distraction on top of tightly constructed melodies. They’d abdicate entirely just three years later with 2001’s Leaves Turn Inside You, executing a 14-song exercise in home recording that observed a crucial band in graceful transition from post-hardcore trio to experimental quintet. The double album was lost in the chaos of a post-9/11 media, baffling onlookers and exhilarating fans in successive breaths before it fell far out of print. At their reinvention and terminus, Unwound ultimately asked “Who Cares”? The Empire box-set teems with period singles, B-sides, unreleased studio tracks, and demos, alongside a 15,000-word essay exploring the terminal stages of the ’90s, indie rock, Unwound, and civilization as we know it.

EMPIRE COMPLETE TRACKLISTING

Disc 1: Challenge For A Civilized Society

1. Data
2. Laugh Track
3. Meet The Plastics
4. The World Is Flat
5. Sonata For Loudspeakers
6. NO TECH
7. Side Effects of Being Tired
8. Lifetime Achievement Award
9. What Went Wrong

Discs 2 & 3: Leaves Turn Inside You

1. We Invent You
2. Look A Ghost
3. December In Thai
4. Treachery
5. Terminus
6. Demons Sing Love Songs
7. Off This Century
8. One Lick Less
9. Scarlett
10. October All Over
11. Summer Freeze
12. Radio GRA
13. Below The Salt
14. Who Cares

Disc 4: Empire

1. Mile Me Deaf
2. The Light At The End Of The Tunnel Is A Train
3. Solo Sonata
4. XNLT
5. Laszlo
6. Torch Song
7. Meet The Plastics (Demo)
8. The World Is Flat (Demo)
9. Empire (Demo)