Hopewell - Stranger

(Priapus, 1997)

Like many people, I imagine, I first got into Hopewell through the Mercury Rev connection – frontman Jason Russo and his brother Justin were in the Rev touring band through the late ’90s – but, while it’s easy to pigeonhole the dudes based on their family tree, it’s important to recognize FULLY that this here is no mere JV/little-sib music-making outfit. In fact, Hopewell, excellent from day one, has actually managed to improve over the years while Mercury Rev has descended further and further into squeaky-voiced, nature-obsessed, pentagram-wearing new-age nonsense. In the band’s earliest incarnation, it was dealing in loud and heavy – yet melodic – spacerock, like if the guitar-crazy Priest Driven Ambulance-era Flaming Lips took a more stoned and deliberate approach to their tape-saturation head-music. “Stranger,” a single taken from the band’s first album, gallops and clangs, the crisp drumming and tasteful keyboard calling to mind Saucerful of Secrets, albeit with much added aggression in the guitar-roar. The moaning, late-night acoustic cover of “Paranoid” flirts with novelty territory, but it’s a creepy enough stripped-down rethink and thus avoids such a knock. It’s puzzling that the band has seemingly written this initial phase out of its official history (their website, before disappearing, listed nothing prior to 2001’s The Curved Glass in the discography); there’s a lot of great music on these early, spaced-out records, and their continued scarcity is a shame.

Homostupids - Cat Music

(Fashionable Idiots, 2008)

More of the same (full-throttle, hardcore-informed, weirdo-generated garage blat), but it’s noticeably tighter than previous records, and even, at times, one is tempted to label this material catchy. The fact that the Homostupids actually bother to write songs – hard as that can be to discern under all the noise and lousy recording quality – automatically separates ’em from most of the goof-punks out there who lazily get by on volume and shtick. And that’s nothing to scoff at, bub. While these high-volume blasts of craziness might not work so well over the course of a full length (lone alb The Intern is a bit of a slog), KNOW that every one of these guys’ 7”s has been quite the zippy ear grenade.

Homostupids - The Edge E.P.

(P.Trash, 2008)

Huzzah! A scumbag return to the sweaty shitcore of “The Glow,” but with extra helpings of Reatard-esque garage-scuzz informing the, AHEM, songwriting! Bash bash scream is the M.O. here, and appropriately poo-fi production values heighten the avant-jerk-punk excitement. An excellent disc, and, if shopping, know that it’s probably not nearly as rare as the label (and distros?) want you to believe... seems any 7” even remotely in the wheelhouse of punk/hardcore involves 10,000 subtle geek-bait repressings in various shades of wax or paper or ink. DO NOT CARE. Still, all eye-roll collector nonsense aside, note and appreciate that hat-wearing beardo THE EDGE is the sleeve star, and was there ever a non-Bono more deserving of mockery? NOPE. I’ll admit that I do own one U2 CD, a single for “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses,” purchased at the Princeton Record Exchange for $1.99 because I could not suppress a morbid curiosity to hear the B-side covers of “Paint it Black” and “Fortunate Son.” And guess what? THESE VERSIONS STINK. Laughably so! Nuts to you, Irishman The Edge!

Homostupids - The Brutal Birthday E.P.

(Richie, 2007)

OK, now Homostupid wackiness fights its way to the fore: six songs packed onto a one-sided 7”, with two sung in an exaggerated, PIL-style sneer, three offering a more lumbering take on the lunatic mayhem of the first EP, and a Numan/muzak instrumental interlude dumped in the middle. Unpredictable… annoying… and still quite satisfying. Almost everything here – particularly the grab-bag stylistic nature of the songs and the gratuitous tape-speed effects – suggests a healthy contempt for the listener, but as long as the music is as surprisingly odd and, yes, fun as what’s on here, I’ll keep on sticking out my hand to feed the mouth that bites me.

Homostupids - The Glow E.P.

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Home - So Much Love

(Cooking Vinyl, 2000)

As was hinted on their earlier, messier releases, Home always had it in ’em to make a lush, complex, song-based record, but I reckon that on those screwy albs of days-gone-by there musta been the constant twin frustrations of CASH and EQUIPMENT (rather than SKILL and AMBITION) holding the band back from achieving true mega-pop grandeur. Once the group finally managed to hook up with Lips/Rev biggie Dave Fridmann, though, poop hit the fan in the most glorious of ways. The expansive Home XIV, front to back, demonstrates this quite ably, with single “So Much Love” (released as a 7” limited to 250 copies) providing the purest radio-pop thrills. It’s a bouncy, optimistic number that wins thanks to sunny harmonies, some dollops of “What Goes On”-style organ and those close-mic’d drums that are Fridmann’s production trademark. Fragmentary weirdness is not totally gone, however, as the B-side is another variation on the “Children’s Suite” piece that the band had already worked into three full-lengths. This chop-’em-up instrumental puts an ominous, horror-movie-esque spin on XIV’s “Children’s Suite 3: Displaying Prisms,” then segues into a robotic, electronics-driven section similar to XI’s “Children’s Suite 2: Health,” before concluding with a cinematic crescendo. Whew!

Home - (You Can Make It) Underground

(Screw Music Forever, 199x)

I’m back from vacation, rested but sporting a painful sunburn due to the bathing beauties with whom I travel having missed a spot during the application of lotion. Crispy right shoulder blade aside, you’ll be pleased to know that the beach, where I ignored music and focused on consuming much purple prose, was a swell time, and now I’m ready to start thinking about records again, starting with – chuckle chuckle – Home. These Floridians-turned-Brooklynites have been on a succession of impressive labels – Relativity, Emperor Jones, Jet Set, Arena Rock, Brah – while somehow managing to stay pretty far under the radar for most of their career. Not sure whether that’s due to the band’s innate quirkiness (sonic/stylistic restlessness, low profile on the concert scene, concept album about sex), or good ol’ fashioned bum luck, but theirs is an extensive and interesting catalog that merits a looky-listen from all askew-pop fans currently drawing both breath and a salary. This early single, likely released in the mid-’90s, is four tracks of extremely enjoyable primitive pop experimentation that succeeds on its own merits, sounding as it does like the late-’90s Flaming Lips recorded on zero budget, or young Pavement without the detached wryness, while also hinting at the lush greatness yet to come on Home XIV. I’ll admit that I find the ultra-lo-fi recording rather self-conscious and gimmicky, even if it was in fact borne of poverty/necessity, but the songs themselves are so good, there being ideas a-plenty here and an obvious knack for melody and laziness-avoidance – a shitkicking Olivia Tremor Control? – that it’s easy to forget ’n’ forgive whatever perceived sonic transgressions. No gyp wax, this; a fine item to take up space on any shelf.