L7 - Everglade

(Slash, 1992)

First, some personal business. Jason from the hyper-informative 7 Inches blog recently posted a recording of a telephone conversation we had, so please go forth and thrill to the beautiful sound of my sleepy voice as a coupla disc-geeks discuss various record-related topics at length. And as you look over his site, be sure to note that Jason is far smarter than I am in that he focuses on exciting NEW music while I waste my ever-shrinking time with oft-terrible older stuff. ALTHOUGH! To leap to my own defense, I do have my moments: Why, just last night I bought a copy of the latest Neil Hamburger 7”, a raging pisser on which he sings with Australian punk band The Hard-Ons. Famed rag The Village Voice happened to be on hand to document my purchase, and their website now carries the handsome photographic evidence. Calling all ladies!

Yes people, as the weather turns cold it’s a hot time indeed for the staff here at I Think I Hate My 45s, and things are only getting hotter as we stride boldly forth into reviews of bands whose names begin with the letter “L” (that being the hottest letter).

But oops: Unfortunately, L7 gets us off to a lousy start.

Yeah, lousy. I mean, it’s chunky riff-stuff with Vig production, so there’s a certain sheen that’s not exactly unappealing, but I can’t work up more than half-mast sympathy for the dum-dum anti-machoisms of the failed call-to-arms “Everglade.” Embarrassing it ain’t, but Grohl-meets-Hanna limp is what it is, so forget about it. And there’s even LESS brainpower on display on the B-exclusive “Freak Magnet,” which is a vomitous outsider wannabe-anthem that should’ve been left in the middle-school diary from which it apparently came. My knowledge of the L7 catalog is pretty limited, but was EVERYTHING they wrote intended to be a low-IQ rallying cry for the kids? And, like these songs, did all of those recordings fall totally flat on their faces? Answer or don’t!