Otherwise, the bright-sounding five-song batch (co-produced by Kramer) is most notable for the band’s raging punk cover of the impossibly obscure “Stitches in My Head” (from a 1977 single by New York’s Alan Milman Sect) and the rambling “Goodbye to Guyville,” whose titular argot for the Chicago indie-rock scene was appropriated by Liz Phair for the name of her first album. “Henhough: The Greatest Story Ever Told” pushes the cooler-than-you envelope with a twangy but ponderous frontier orphans ballad a straight, melodramatic rendition of Hot Chocolate’s “Emma” typifies the band’s bone-dry sense of wit, which adds nothing to the original except the certainty that the parodic gesture is genius enough.įollowing that same line of reasoning, the Stull EP begins with a shmeary, overbearing and irony-drenched rendition of Neil Diamond’s “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” that proved to be a charm for the group several years later when it fit in with the similarly smarmy obsessions of Quentin Tarantino, who folded it into Pulp Fiction, from where it become a breakout hit of sorts. The self-production is competent if a bit woolly in spots the song titles (including a straight-faced tribute to the new guy, “ Blackie’s Birthday”) still read better than the tunes sound. With drummer Blackie Onassis (Johnny Rowan) entering the picture, The SuperSonic Storybook throws even choppier rhythms into a poppier, more streamlined attack for the first time, both the arrangements and the vocals seem premeditated. Clunky, unkempt and focused with all the accuracy of a drunk waving a shotgun, Americruiser would be nothing if not for its deluxe furnishings. Sort of tuneful roots-punk (roughed-up Replacements minus the Stones impulse), the brief album sets out with the band’s best idea yet (“Ticket to LA”) - and then fails to catch the plane it’s on. Lacking an audio personality, the band attaches promising titles (“Dump Dump Dump,” “God Flintstone,” “The Polaroid Doll”) to shapeless, styleless tossoffs and leaves it at that.īutch Vig’s production of Americruiser (the CD of which includes the first LP and a cover of “Wichita Lineman” from a single) cleans the sound up enough to reveal the thin strings, clunky tempos and weak hooks holding the songs together. The band did get appreciably better at its studio game over the years - especially after the Geffen-coincident hookup with Philadelphia’s no-nonsense Butcher Brothers (Joe and Phil Nicolo, better known as hip-hop producers) - but the records’ paucity of content left even the band’s most seemingly ambitious efforts sounding weak-willed and trivial.įollowing a premature Steve Albini-engineered-and-issued EP (he had a label called Ruthless before Eazy-E), National “Nash” Kato (vocals, guitar real name Nathan Katruud), Eddie “King” Roeser (vocals, bass, later guitar) and drummer Jack Watt (“The Jaguar”) cut the awful-sounding Jesus Urge Superstar with Albini the murk of thick mid-tempo guitar rock does nothing to prove the existence of songs, much less any audible trace of junk-culture devotion. Disinclined to do a lot more than occasionally simulate relevant archetypes, Urge was all fantasy and spin: a repeated promise that never delivered the goods. Though devoted to being one of the best-looking bands around, the trio rarely showed more than passing concern for making records that sound like anything. Ian Buckle, Rory Carver, Emma Roberts - Robert Fürstenthal: Complete Choral Music, Vol.Of far more profound cultural relevance to semioticians and hometown pals than open-eared music fans outside Chicago, conceptual super-poseurs Urge Overkill never let a serious or original musical thought get in the way of a flashy uniform, a swinging medallion, a styling hairdcut or other tropes of their camp-hip-cred ’70s crud-rock pretensions. Kendra Christensen - Union in Jazz (2022)īruce Springsteen - Live On Air Tonight (2022) VA - Electronic Shore (Chill out Tunes), Vol. Two Beats Dixie Sound - Vintage Pearls: Happy Dixieland Fun (2022) Hi-Res
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