Hyperjinx Tricycle - Long Lost Love

(Important/Shortwave, 2002)

I’m not usually a big fan of Daniel Johnston’s collaborative projects, given that the presence of outside musicians – and the attendant focus on things like arrangements, polish, and a consistent tempo – tends to dilute and flatten an idiosyncratic style that works far better on its own terms. Still, on this disc of outtakes from the Hyperjinx Tricycle’s first album, it’s interesting hearing Johnston’s familiar voice and lyrical themes within Jack Medicine’s dark musical settings, particularly “Long Lost Love,” which is raw and understated in a fashion that his over-professional, over-produced, and generally over-thunk albums of the last decade (including this group’s scattershot debut) have failed to manage. The B-side is of equal worth, featuring as it does a moody Medicine original reminiscent of Sparklehorse and a radically different version of Johnston’s piano-pounding stab at a theme for the “Greg the Bunny” program. With insipid lyrics (“Greg the Bunny/TV show/He’s a really cool bunny/He’s so funny/Yes he is”) delivered by dueling, out-of-sync vocal tracks, the latter is bad-trip material in the best sense, recalling the early Stress tapes in its ability to be simultaneously – and effortlessly – charming and unsettling.

Human Eye - Dinosaur Bones

(Ypsilanti, 2007)

Despite the tra-la-la bona fides he’s built up over the years with Saturday Looks Good to Me, folks better realize that Fred Thomas puts out some doggone crazy stuff on his Ypsilanti microlabel, waxed blurts that reflect his way-back association with the Michigan noise scene of olde. Which certainly isn’t to say that Human Eye is anywhere near as harsh as a Wolf Eyes or as far-out as a Dead Machines, but these guys do at least take the classic shit-punk maneuvers (tight rhythm section, mongoloid moan-yell, buzzsaw distortion) and tweak them with liberal squirtings of synths, ugly noises and jarring mixing techniques in order to create some awright-enough product. Like the frantic “Dinosaur Bones,” absolutely the best song on here, which is crazed enough to make me curious about the full-length on In The Red… still haven’t checked it out, though, so your guess is as good as mine on that front, quality-wise. Thoughts from those out there who Know? Do inform.

And: Ever helpful, I was trying to help a young lady name her thanatology book this morning by generating a series of lousy death-related puns. Tell me now, you disinterested third party of the internet, do any of these strike YOUR fancy? “Jeepers Reapers!” “Everything Else is Just Grave-y.” “Tomb it May Concern.” “Of Corpse!” “Urn! Urn! Urn! (To Everything There is a Season.)” “Of Scythes and Men.” “That’s A-Morbid.”

I know what you’re thinking and I agree: Where’s MY genius grant??

Huegenius - Drink Fight + Fun

(Damaged Goods, 1994)

In 1994, Pooh Sticks honcho Hue took some time off from the band – which by that point had become a rather sleek power-twee act – to record a tribute to recently-croaked feces-smearer G. G. Allin. Funny enough as that is on its very face, the fact that he named the project “Huegenius” as a poke at his former labelmate Eugene Kelly’s post-Vaselines group, Eugenius, adds a few extra giggles to this wacky little package. The raucous A-side is a reworked version of Allin’s “Drink Fight + Fuck” that simply replaces each occurrence of the obscenity with the more radio-friendly word “fun.” Aside from that, Hue sticks close to the original, but supercharges the tempo and gives a beefy, Ramones-y performance that I actually prefer to the ragged Allin recording. The song’s brief intro, which sounds like a combination of the MASH theme and early Metallica when they shot for “introspective,” is also on the B-side in slightly different form under the name “Theme for GG” (or “Soliloquy to GG Allin” on the 7” label). The whole thing’s a definite departure from the gelded, sunshiny Pooh Sticks, and quite an entertaining one at that. Now if anyone out there knows where I can find a copy of Hue’s other solo disc, which was a tribute to Brian Wilson recorded under the name Dumb Angels, drop a dime and hep me to its location IMMEDIATELY!

The How - Happy Matt

(Slumberland, 2006)

The “Happy Matt” single is just what it looks like: a recreation of the Who sound circa ’66, right down to the manic drum fills and Daltrey falsetto. The A-side deserves mild criticism for not being quite as fiery as it should be, but “When I Was a Boy” satisfies by turning the “Ivor the Engine Driver” section of “A Quick One While He’s Away” into a self-contained mod-pop song with a Creation-esque speaker-blowing feedback solo. Nothing major here, just a sloppy, fun one-off that largely achieves its Rutles-style objective. Released as one of the records that announced the relaunch of Slumberland a few years back, the band is made up of members of Henry’s Dress and Boyracer, making it a nice bridge from the label’s past to its present/future.

House Of Love - Beatles And The Stones

(Fontana, 1990)

As one who loves the first half of the House of Love’s career, particularly the Creation period, believe me when I say that the performance on “Beatles and the Stones” is impeccable: it’s shuffly proto-Britpop loveliness with great vocals and moments of mellow-cello half-psych that border on charming pastiche. But the lyrics, OH the lyrics… they’re not so good. Sure, I can dig the line about how the Beatles and the Rolling Stones “made it good to be alone,” as most current and former teenkiddies know all about squirreling away with their headphones and a pile of albums for an afternoon of intense listenin’, but when Guy Chadwick states that those bands “sucked the marrow out of bones” and “put the V in Vietnam,” his trolley rockets right off the rails. Really: “Put the V in Vietnam”?! What does that MEAN? Is it supposed to be some tortured reference to the peace sign? If it is, well, shoot, this is hardly a deep thought, but I don’t think either the Beatles or the Stones ever did all that much to actively promote peace over in Southeast Asia. They just put out records, made mountains of cash, and mumbled a few vague platitudes about love as they descended further into drug-addicted, rich-guy isolation. All of which I envy! As did the House of Love, I guess, because, speaking of getting rich, they topped even the Jesus and Mary Chain for sheer product-avalanche insanity (or is GREED the word I want to use?) by releasing this single in TEN different configurations, with eleven separate B-sides and three versions of the title song spread across the formats. A real “gift” for the mentally-ill collectors out there. The B-sides on this one, the 7” with the blue cover that folds out into a poster of the band, are the atmospheric filler tracks “Love IV” and “Love V,” two instrumental sketches that bear no apparent relation to each other. Both appear on A Spy in the House of Love, while the A-Side is included in its original mix on the second self-titled album and in its superior remixed form, as heard here, on the later Best of and Fontana Years compilations.

Johnny Horton - The Battle Of New Orleans

(Columbia, 1959)

Song’s called “The Battle of New Orleans,” and that’s exactly what the thing’s all about, as Johnny Horton hickishly rasps forth the story of a certain 1815 military dust-up with the British. Novelty song? Pretty much, yeah! There’s a good-natured levity present, but military drums, banjo, and an oom-pah bass give the song an appropriately martial feel, and those deep-voiced dudes who march up to the mic in the chorus truly seal the deal: this is a novelty of the MANLY sort. Patriotic, too! AND educational! Hear it today, but know that there’s still MORE on this dynamite single! Mindful of the ladies in the house, Horton offers a syrupy ballad in the mold of early Elvis on the B (“All For the Love of a Girl”) that’s still fragile enough – in spite of overbaked heavenly-choir backing vocals – to maintain some effectiveness, and the singing saw that opens and closes the track is a very fine touch. The Bible tells us that God rewards such spiffy work, and, times being different back then – what with the record-buying masses frothing for patriotic, educational manliness – “The Battle of New Orleans” was indeed a gigantic hit. And Johnny Horton? He died.

Hopewell - Good Good Good Desperation

(Tee Pee, 2009)

About four years ago, I was making money on the side by transcribing interview tapes for a book about music videos. One of them was with a very famous director, who had a funny anecdote involving Michael Jackson. Since the story didn’t make it into the book but still gets me tittering every time I think about it, I’ll (unethically?) post it here for all you billions of readers to enjoy:

“Vincent came in and I was just delighted to meet Vincent Price. … Then he said to me, ‘Can you help me?’ I said, ‘What’s that?’ He says, ‘I did this vocal for Michael, he asked me to do it, and they paid me scale. I have a vocal on the biggest-selling album of all time and I get no money.’ … So anyway, years later, I’m at the Tower Records on Sunset, and it’s late at night, eleven o’clock, on a Saturday night. I was with my son, who was quite little. And there’s Vincent Price. And this is when the first scandals were starting with Mike, years later. And Vincent booms out to me, in that voice, you know, powerfully, ‘What do you think about our friend Michael?’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know. I want to think that it’s untrue.’ And Vincent says, so everyone can hear him, ‘WELL HE CERTAINLY FUCKED ME.’”

And what of Hopewell? Well, it bums me out to report that their new album, which sees the band continue its rapid evolution into a psych-tinged theatrical-rock act, is a far less entertaining affair than the crude utterances of Vincent Price. The Birds of Appetite was the first of their records to really display this change of direction (though, in retrospect, it’s clear that the seeds of their current sound were present in Jason Russo’s work from the beginning), but that album succeeded precisely because it didn’t go for the non-stop heavy-handed dramatics that sink most of Good Good Desperation, from the apocalyptic lyrics to the experimental missteps to Russo’s high-pitched, curiously Perry Farrell-esque wailing. The whole thing’s better labeled a disappointment than a disaster, and there are a few high points, particularly the 7”-worthy title track’s glammy, druggy stomp, which is more or less the band’s earlier “Calcutta” shoved through some fucked T. Rex filter. The B-side of the single, “Opus Part II” (an edited version of the album’s “Preamble Part II”), showcases some ho-hum harmonized sighing a la the Beach Boys’ “Our Prayer” before bursting into full-band, Big Rock gestures. Eh. Certainly no need at this point to panic in the streets and swear off Hopewell – heck, this 7” is pretty darn ownable – but the group’s recent material marks an obvious low.

Hopewell - The Angel Is My Watermark

(Cutty Shark, 2001)

Looks like the local weather gods – vinyl fans, apparently – listened to the internet sobbings of Jason Seven Inches and I Think I Hate My 45s Me, because today the neverending rain actually held off long enough to allow me to attend a minor league baseball game. And not only did I receive a free Barack Obama bobblehead at the gate, but I, a betting man, also got to make a wager with my companion concerning one Daniel April, a left-handed reliever outta Colorado who made his professional debut in this very game. My GUARANTEE is that this guy is going to make it to the major leagues some day, even if it’s just for one pitch five or six years down the road. Yes, I GUARANTEE IT! Now, is that because I have a sharp scouting eye and could see something special over the one-and-a-third innings April threw for the short-season Hudson Valley Renegades tonight? Heck no! It’s because he’s a left-handed reliever! All of those guys get called up sooner or later, schlubs or otherwise! So here’s hoping you make a fine career of it, young Daniel April, and here’s hoping I collect a cool FIVE BUCKS in the not-too-distant future.

BUT. On a more serious note, as a wise man once observed, the word “baseball” ends with two L’s. As does the word, or shall we say band name, “Hopewell.” And that’s an eerie yet excellent point, wise man!

OK, all classic segues aside, what was Hopewell getting itself up to in 2001? Well, other than releasing the gooey, hard-hitting druggernaut pop LP The Curved Glass (most of which had been recorded four years earlier!), these fellers from upstate NY were busy dribbling out 7”s and EPs chock fulla porky-prime cuts. Like “The Angel is My Watermark,” a rompin’, stompin’ single-edit of the album’s best track, one that’s heavy on the toms, the fuzz, and the melodic knife-twisting, a perfect blend of ’90s space-rock and millennial Fridmann bombast. Lunar pomp? Yes! WOW! A song this swell certainly deserves to be heard in four different incarnations, and thankfully that’s just what Hopewell offered at the time: The LP contains both the “standard” “Angel” and an instrumental reprise; the 7” has the truncated “North Atlantic Edit” (first released on a 2000 Fierce Panda multi-artist EP called “Clooney Tunes”); and the CD EP features a full-length mix that joins the two sections from the album into one ultimate version. Yeepers! Also included on the 7” and the EP, “Incantatio” is an experimental zone-out that moves from hushed lullaby to rhythm-centric tribal-clomp; it’s interesting and worth hearing, but seems to belong more to the band’s earlier, “freer” phase than to the more carefully-structured act it was by now evolving into. And while that semi-schizophrenia of vision would soon be resolved after a few years and a few lineup changes on The Birds of Appetite, these 2000/2001 releases still represent, for better or worse (mostly the former), the most interesting and varied phase of Hopewell’s career – the period while the band was “mature,” essentially, but still figuring out exactly what it wanted to do and be.

Hopewell - Small Places

(Zeal, 2000)

Hopewell’s second album, The Curved Glass, eliminates some of the noisy jamminess of the debut in favor of greater concision and a stronger pop influence, and does so without neutering the group’s decidedly crunchy sound. Nifty trick! Released as a teaser 7” by a Belgian label, the dense “Small Places” emphasizes a stabbing, rhythmic keyboard loop and Jason Russo’s whispery croon, though there’s still an undercurrent of distorted guitar that erupts between verses and ultimately brings the song to a sudden, crashing close. A bit too simple in its construction and abrupt in its ending, this isn’t one of the album’s best tracks, but that plunk-plunk-plunk loop is at least memorable, and the song effectively points the way towards the band’s more pop/rock-based future. The B-side is the “Egoless Mix” of “Sunny Days,” a lengthy ditty that originally appeared in nearly identical form on the impossible-to-find “Purple Balloon” EP. There’s a rootsy, gently zonked feel to the song that’s reminiscent of ’70s Neil Young crossed with early Mercury Rev – dig that flute – so you can betcha that hazy bliss is pretty much the name of this game (& it is!). Overall, it’s a better-than-decent single, yes, but since you can get both tracks elsewhere with a little searching, there’s no need to pick this one up unless, defying all normal standards of taste, you happen to get off on the ug sleeve art.

And now, as an unrelated postscript, let me become the millionth crybaby to whine that the non-stop rain we’ve been having in New York City this June is utterly miserable. The canceled ballgames, bikerides, picnics, stoopsales, and leisurely strolls… those I can handle. I’ll even tolerate the humidity. No, for me, the final straw came yesterday afternoon, when I was caught in a sudden downpour that splattered with hateful precipitation the Moody Blues LPs I’d just bought at a flea market. Fists a-clenched and a-shaking, I screamed to the cloudy heavens above: Have you, o rain, no sense, no decency?! Water must never, NEVER come into contact with Caught Live +5! Now, please, for the love of Mike Pinder, GIVE US CLEAR WEATHER.

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.

Hollowbody - Tangled

(Bomp/Tangible, 1993)

So I’ve been in New Jersey for the last few days, a mini-trip that was “planned” about 15 minutes before I actually took it, and I’m still feeling sluggishly ill from the sun, booze, pizza, lack of sleep, and bare-mattress accommodations that made the trip semi-worth taking. Which means I should probably be in the perfect frame of mind right now for the echo-y, crawling guitar-psych of Hollowbody, but hmm, golly gee... I’m not into this record. At all. I guess I just can’t ignore that (a) Anton Newcombe had a hand in the release of the disc – it being part of the “Tangible Box” – and (b) his own work around the same time was generally similar and generally STRONGER. “Tangled,” the best song here, is a dead ringer for a lesser track off of Methodrone or Spacegirl and Other Favorites, while the livelier “Shelter Island” is an instrumental that could’ve been churned out by a ballsier Darkside. Whoopee. Yeah, look, again, the BJM was insanely prolific throughout the overlapping period during which it was recording far better versions of songs like these, but if you’re dying – DYING! – to hear some true D-list stuff in that kinda regressive post-Spacemen 3 style, absolutely go forth and over-spend for the Hollowbody 7”. I’m sure you’ll be thrilled for the rest of your days that you did.

Robyn Hitchcock - The Man Who Invented Himself

(Armageddon, 1981)

Admission: I’ve never been able to get over the fact that the rest of Robyn Hitchcock’s material – both before and after 1980 – doesn’t sound exactly like Underwater Moonlight. For that one record, everything clicked lyrically and musically, his elsewhere labored (annoying?) eccentricity briefly and perfectly married to a dense, guitar-driven pop-rock catchiness that produced an LP with nary a clunker. The dissolution of that tight Soft Boys lineup and a further retreat into goofy themes and musical jokes make his subsequent work very frustrating to me, but there are a few winsome tunes scattered throughout his discography, and this debut solo single, “The Man Who Invented Himself,” is certainly one of them. Its bouncy piano and horns cast it as the well-groomed, gainfully-employed relative of “Gigolo Aunt,” a sweet li’l nugget that displays considerable popwriting talent and polish with the easy-breeziness of White Album McCartney. Thumbs up! Thumbs up all day long! The warped space-bubblegum of “Dancing on God’s Thumb” has some nice full-band interplay that marks it as similar to late-period Soft Boys – and most members of the group did in fact play on the Black Snake Diamond Role sessions, so the album is a relatively safe investment for Soft Boys fans nervous about dipping into the solo years – but the vaguely dancefloor-appropriate groove makes it clear that Hitchcock is stretching out in odd, and not totally satisfying, new ways.

The recent Yep Roc reissues inexplicably ignore the non-album B-side, so vinyl (along with some older CDs) is currently the only place to get “Dancing…”. Weirder still, the original, horn-laced mix of “The Man Who Invented Himself” has gone missing; both the Rhino and the Yep Roc CDs remove those jolly, skronky tootlers, and their absence gives the song a leaner, more intimate feel that doesn’t improve it. An unfortunate, mildly irritating situation that oughta be rectified.

Highlander II's - Nursing A Hangover

(Planet Pimp, 1994)

Those kooky jackasses at Planet Pimp laid a predictably puzzling egg with this Highlander II’s single: there’s a “Straight Side” (titled “Nursing a Hangover”) devoted to covers of traditional songs, and a “Queer Side” (“Cash in on Queer Core”) that addresses more modern themes. The music has a folksy, Appalachia-partytime feel to it, thanks to the omnipresent fiddle and arrangements that swing with a good-natured booziness, but the band does crank up a decent VU ’69 boogie on its kicking version of Jimmie Rodgers’ “Side Track.” The whole thing exists midway between garage rock and barn rock, with plenty of dumb humor (the lone original: “Slacker Girl”) and shit production to boot, making it proudly unnecessary beyond its entertaining sleeve art – even if “Side Track” does deserve to be heard by trash aficionados everywhere. Of course, as with most Planet Pimp releases, half the joke and half the joy is the fact that these guys – who were probably pals with, or working for, or running the label – even put out a record at all.

And hey, have you actually SEEN Highlander II: The Quickening? Movies don’t get much more ludicrous, and the band is to be commended for hopping onto that very special bandwagon and paying tribute as they did. A poorly-written and since-deleted tidbit from the film’s Wikipedia entry sums up the movie’s absurdity quite well, and I offer it here unedited: “It is ironic that when Ramírez is about to die and Connor asks him if he will ever see him again Ramírez says ‘Who knows Highlander? Who knows?’ Then winks at the audience clearly implying that he will indeed return but due to the very negative reception of the film he does not end up returning.”

Henry's Dress - 1620

(Slumberland, 1993)

If there’s one band whose catalog needs to get back into print STAT, it’s probably Henry’s Dress (second place: Moose). The pedigree here is pretty impeccable, as the band later splintered into Aislers Set, Coachwhips, and Sic Alps, and dudes produced, no kidding, some of the best-ever American fuzzgaze in their brief time together. This debut release is a crunchy, bass-driven, guitar-screaming meeting of “You Made Me Realize” and Swirlies, a holy combo made all the holier by the fact that Henry’s Dress – unlike many other bands working roughly similar turf – has a rhythm section that actually matters. Even on the budget-Slowdive B-side (“Stumble”), there’s a prominent low-end in the chorus that gives the song its neck-snap power… a tuffer Black Tambourine gobbling codeine woulda sounded something like this. Later records would feature lady-vox and veer further into fucked-pop territory, but this first single remains a pounding, exciting introduction to what has, regrettably, become an obscure, expensive discography; if you can actually locate the records, they’re must-haves and must-hears – fug the cost.