Hello Defective – Kill Us Now

Hello Defective are the British duo of Armitage and Kirby with some extra help by a few other contributors. This is their debut full-length of bright psych pop in vein of mid-90s Flaming Lips material. Kirby’s vocals are very similar to that of Wayne Coyne, with a wistful, nasal charm and grace. They craft some very pleasant melodies that show their influences but are definitely not derivative in any way.
“Getting Started with Stereo” starts the disc with some bouncing keyboard work and jangling guitar, with some other effects adding to the cloudy feeling. The song uses a wonderful psych-pop melody mixing with vocals that are reminiscent of Coyne and some nice guitar breaks. “Plastic Hearts” is a blissful piece of what songwriting should be like, with some truly great vocals and soaring guitar from Kirby. Kirby’s dirty, fuzzed-out guitar sound is spectacular here, while there is also a standout keyboard performance by Armitage not to be outdone. This is a standout performance on this disc where everything clicks, as the song ends before you want it to.
“Kill Us Now” sounds like a lost track that the members of the Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev have never made. Kirby sounds eerily like Coyne again here, while there are some simplistic yet experimental sounds emanating from the backing. “Dim Like a Dog’s Life” is a nice, laid-back piece of pop magnificence with some ultra catchy melodies. Kirby’s breathy vocals will stick in your head long after the songs, and the backing vocals give your mind something else to play with. “Our Haunted House is Home” has a spacey Bowie-like vocal melody behind some nice guitar work and airy keys.
This is one of the most pleasurable discs I have heard in a long time. It’s always great to hear music that is willing to take chances and shines because of it. This style has been done over and over again, but few stretch the boundaries like this band, making the album a must-listen. Kirby and Armitage complement each other very nicely through it all, crafting some unbelievable pysch-pop songs. This was one of the most unexpected surprises of a disc I have ever come across; it has really knocked me off my feet every time I put it on. After each listen, something new shows itself. This is a disc that needs to be heard by everyone, one of the best listening experiences for me in a long time. I can’t find the words to express how good it makes me feel.

Beggarz – Days Come Easy

Beggarz are a garage rock/bar band from Toronto that takes from the sounds of classic rock. They borrow the bluesy swagger from the Rolling Stones while throwing in some Southern rock sounds as well. They craft tough songs that hark back to the early days of rock when they mixed the sound of R&B into their groups. Adam Cassidy has the snotty, nasal vocals down pat, and on occasion he even sounds a little like Mick Jagger.
“Days Come Easy” has some tough guitar riffs and a very nice chorus with the somewhat whiny vocals from Cassidy. The chorus has some very nice melodic vocals that carry some emotion that is not overly grating, though the guitar break is a little too clichéd. “Take it Out on Me” has that greasy early rock and R&B feel, but it’s a little too clean, taking away the grit. The playing is pretty competent, and there is some nice guitar playing and pretty female backing vocals to accompany this nice little song.
“Janine” is a Southern rock boogie tune, with some pretty nice guitar playing that has some nice soul to it and early rock leanings. Cassidy carries his syllables a little too far, hanging on to word endings far more than he should. “Bad Luck Baby” has a bluesy groove and some attitude carrying the tune. The lyrics are a little pedestrian and awkward, following the standard path of a guy losing his girl.
This is some standard bar-band classic rock that is a little stale and gets old rather quickly. The band is clearly trying to attain the swagger that the Rolling Stones’ early music had but is a little too clean with not enough snotty attitude. The lyrics are quite rough in many places, and that can be a little hard to take, as are the vocals in spots. The production is really slick and takes some of the soul away, leaving some limp performances where there should be some dirt and grit. In short doses, the disc can be somewhat enjoyable, but overall it’s hard to get through and too clichéd.

Two Guys – Recorded

This is Two Guys’ debut album. It’s called Recorded. The lack of time and effort put forth in naming this project and the album title is, unfortunately, indicative of the content. Which is a shame, really, because some of the songs included on this CD show potential and creativity. But neither the potential nor the creativity were exploited to their fullest extent, so the album comes off as an almost, but not quite, enjoyable listen.
Two Guys is Ryan and Cameron Jones, two brothers (duh) who live in Portland, OR. Ryan spent some time playing with San Diego band Pinback before reuniting with his bro’ in the City of Roses. Ryan wrote the songs and plays baritone guitar and sings. Cameron plays drums. They’re both good musicians, handling their instruments well. Ryan’s voice is vaguely whiny and nasal, and he has a tendency to slur his pronunciations, making it impossible to understand half of what he’s singing. Not a good thing. It also drains a lot of the emotion out of lyrics that are, by content, quite angsty. This, along with sometimes awkward dynamics and odd tempo changes, keeps you feeling slightly muddled and disappointed.
Every time a song approaches listenability, it somehow veers off into unknown territory again. Which is okay if the genre du jour is arty avant-garde musical compositions, or if you’re using the tactic as a technique to keep listeners on the hook, so to speak. That is not the case here. These are math-ish slacker-rock tunes with pop leanings. With a little time and effort, some of these songs could have been polished into really great tunes (as I said, there is potential), but that time and effort was not taken and opportunity was missed, I think. Ryan would be wise to spend time on honing his vocal delivery and phrasing. I think that Mr. Jones nails part of his problem in the lyrics to the song “TV”: “I’ve got a short attention span, I’m feeling stupid, feeling stupid….”
So where is the potential on this disc, you may ask? How can I write such a totally pessimistic review about this band and still claim that they show potential? The potential lies in the very last song on this record, titled “Another Chance to Fuck Up.” In a blinding stroke of irony, this is the song that wasn’t screwed up. It showcases everything about this band that’s good, and none of what’s bad. The guitar and drums perfectly lock together throughout, and the pop heart of the song is unmolested for the entire six minutes. The song breathes in the intro and verses and compacts during the chorus, pouring its bittersweet message forth in one forceful thrust.
With more efforts like this one, Two Guys could be releasing albums of indie-rock bliss instead of the half-hearted honey and venom mixture that came tumbling out on Recorded.

The Capitol Years – Jewelry Store EP

The Capitol Years just want to rock. Jewelry Store, the band’s sux-song offering to the masses, accomplishes just that. Shai Halperin, head-honcho, released his first CD, Meet Yr Acres, as a solo act. This time around, he picked up Kyle Lloyd, Dave Wayne Daniels, and Jeff Van Newkirk to bring the rock full-tilt. The random fact that all these guys are pretty ugly, as blatantly displayed on the reverse of the CD cover, only makes them seem more down-to-earth.
“Jet Black” assures you right-off-the-bat that these guys rock. It’s a little bluesy, a little garage, and a lot rock. The sound propounds to an impenetrable apex of pounding drums, dizzying guitars, and howling cat calls. The title track, “Jewelry Store,” courteously slows its gait, allowing you to catch your breath. “Lucky Stripe” shows some Brit-pop influence. The deft handling of harmonies and the way the song jangles along will keep you listening to this song. “Train Race” ends on a strong note with the heavy guitars rocking in a non-butt-rock way.
Some days you just want to listen to rock and roll: un-watered down, loud, crunchy, down-to-earth, rock and roll. When that urge strikes you, remember this review and let The Capitol Years bring you the jams.

Henry – Cyanide EP

A quick note from a critic to aspiring hipster musicians: when emulating the style of one of the unimpeachable figures in the rock snob’s pantheon, be very careful how you do it. Doing your best impression of the New York Dolls might seem like the quickest route to our sweaty little hearts, but despite the facts that our species is utterly detached from reality and so few of our members have girlfriends or even contact with people that don’t come to us through vinyl, we are a wily bunch when it comes to spotting a smarmy gesture from a band. Boy howdy, are we ever keen to point out how irrelevant any music is that bears a noticeable resemblance to something which has come before. After all, how else could we let you know that we’re cool enough to listen to Captain Beefheart unless we say something gratuitous and stupid about how Tom Waits was ripping him off?
This little preamble was inspired by Boston-based trio Henry, a group whose singer/songwriter/guitarist, Don Gould, can hardly go to the bathroom without having his bodily functions compared with those of Lou Reed. Many bands find this a desirable state of affairs, as if they had no greater goal in their artistic lives than to appear in the “Followers” section of their hero’s entry on All Music Guide. Gould & Co. may or may not fall into such a category, but the great shame of it all is that so few people are able to actually hear their home-recorded debut EP, Cyanide, as a work that stands on its own rather than just as a seed of Reed. And despite flaws which do include an excessive debt owed to you-know-who, it’s a record well worth hearing.
After overcoming the distracting similarities in vocal delivery and general tone with the Velvets that have been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere, the open-minded listener should discover that there are more sources of inspiration in Henry’s bag than initial spins suggest. They are too rooted in traditional grooves to be out-and-out clones, and while that gives them some much-needed breathing room away from their purported role models, it also renders them a duller band than if they had lit out for more adventurous territory. Henry does keep things interesting by bending some harmonic and melodic rules (the former through odd chord progressions, the latter by largely ignoring melody altogether), but rhythmically, they come up short. On the uptempo cuts, they fare better than on the slower grinds. There, they sound complacent and sluggish. While Gould agitates for a hypnotic drone, drummer Brian Toomey and bassist Tom Rasku play it much more straight, with underwhelming results. Their great weakness is their lack of versatility, one which is harshly exposed even in the limited space of an EP.
In spite of this, Henry is not without significant weapons in its arsenal. The threesome displays a knack for assembling compelling songs more often than not, and when Gould’s voice rises to the surface, it shows fierce individuality. The D.I.Y. approach of Cyanide, while periodically allowing indulgences that a professional recording would rightly screen out, serves mostly to keep the performances fresh and the material authentic. It’s a personal record in both good and bad ways, but it’s neither solipsistic nor whiny, pitfalls its authors did well to avoid. And if Gould has taken a bit too much from the Rock and Roll Animal for his own good, he has at least stayed clear of the shoddier parts of Reed’s legacy, namely his penchant for cruelty and self-conscious shock. If Henry could likewise separate the wheat from the chaff with enough additional influences to downplay their primary one, their listeners might be more able to appreciate their distinct talents without the albatross of lofty comparisons.

Drunk Horse – Adult Situations

Just when you thought it was over, when no more juice could be squeezed from the tired, abused golden fruit, along comes a record like this. This is big limo ridin’, coke snortin’, whisky drinkin’, groupie fuckin’ rocka-rolla from the deepest bowels of the darkest city streets and the beer and puke-stained floors of the seediest back alley dives. This is Southern-fried, stoner-licious, balls-out, boogie-laced mayhem played with more sleazy swagger and cock-sure attitude than a five-dollar whore lookin’ for a push hit. It’s a vibe that – at first listen – seems borrowed from 70′s riff mongers like Sabbath and Zeppelin mixed with the raunchy, jam-oriented trappings of Ted Nugent and ZZ Top. But further inspection reveals something much more creative and ambitious (and ultimately more satisfying!) than four talented musicians recapturing the glory of arena rock’s zenith. There is some genuine innovation here; a melding of the past and present where classic rock and boogie-blues are infused with modern punk and progressive rock to form a unique sound that is part tried-and-true, part over-the-edge experimentation.
Adult Situations is the third release from the Oakland based quartet, Drunk Horse. Musically the group relies predominantly on the high-octane twin guitar assault of John Niles and Eli Eckert, whose dexterous chops and expansive rock template runs the gamut from sludgy, primal slabs of stoner rock to intricate melodic guitar leads almost metal in their technical execution. The rhythm section – consisting of bassist Cyrus Comiskey and drummer Cripe Jergensen – is equally phenomenal, pounding out their deep grooves and turn-on-a-dime-dynamics with ferocious intensity. Although the majority of their songs are rooted in blues – as most rock music is – the band’s unconventional progressive leanings and stylistic flourishes gives them an arty, avant-garde feel that allows them to connect with both purists and those looking for something more adventuresome than your typical retro fare.
Drunk Horse comes charging out of the gate with the brash “National Lust,” a thunderous chunk of muscular rock that sounds like a cross between Black Sabbath and End of Silence era Rollins Band. Eckert, who in addition to playing guitar also handles the vocals, even sounds a bit like Rollins – albeit with truckloads more soul and a remarkably bigger libido (“The streets are burnin’, everybody got a dose / Tight pants make it hard not to think about sexual intercourse”). As it turns out, no subject is too sacred, profane, or out-of-place for the enigmatic frontman. “Lube Job,” for example, is a zany stomp through the sordid world of male prostitution while “The Bitch is Bach” examines the storied life of the great classical composer with a heady combination of wry, tongue-in-cheek humor and explosive guitar-fueled bombast. “Company Man” is another surefire scorcher, a barnstorming riff-o-rama about, of all things, CIA drug smuggling. The album ends with the big-guitar nastiness of “One Dollar Records,” a Southern garage-rock ditty with an anthemic chorus that will be stuck in your head for days.
Like their two previous records, Adult Situations was recorded and mixed by Tim Green of fellow guitar wizards The Fucking Champs. The two bands have completed two US tours together, and Green’s familiarity with the music shines through on the final mix. There are no bells and whistles here – no tricks or gimmicks – just a raw intensity and manic energy that cannot be manufactured or manipulated. This is dirty, greasy, cocky, shameless stuff, but it’s played with such maniacal skill and unpretentious fervor that you can’t help but succumb to Drunk Horse’s sonic onslaught and relentless grooves. So go ahead, climb aboard and dig in your heels. This is one ride you shouldn’t miss.

Soledad Brothers – Live

The blues are meant to be played live. Not that the sound of an electric blues band can’t be exhilarating in a studio setting, but that boozy, sweaty swagger is just hard to convey on a spinning piece of plastic (that’s probably why you’ll be hard-pressed to find many truly definitive blues studio albums). As boastful and showy as the most storied characters in the genre are, the compositional elements of the music are still generally quite humble, meaning that personality can go a long way in deciding how effective a certain artist is. Electric blues in particular are prone to suffer from the monotony induced from hearing the same riff repeated 30 times in four minutes, yet in live setting, seeing the musician work their hypnosis right in front of you, the spell is much easier to fall under. The Soledad Brothers are no exception to this rule.
Having seen them live on their stint as the White Stripes opening act, I can attest to the strange power of seeing the primal dynamic unfold in a live setting, as guitarist Johnny Walker and drummer Ben Swank panted, pounded, and literally rolled around on the stage like deranged children during their 30 minute set. Not long on variation by any means, by the time they had finished, you felt as if you had just watched a half an hour of the same song but somehow didn’t feel cheated. In fact, it seemed incredibly authentic. Or at least as authentic as two 20-something white guys from Ohio could be.
This disc captures that spirit well. From the pure Bo Diddley one-chord exorcisms (“Stand Up”) to plodding salacious grooves (“Johnny’s Death Letter”) and howling slide playing (“Up Jumped the Devil”), the disc is a triumph in attitude if not technique (although they’re no slouches on the technical end, either). To be sure, some tracks are arranged to look a bit too much like each other, but the addition of a truly skonky sax player Oliver Henry on a couple tracks adds another layer of grime to the mix and generally brightens the whole package. No doubt, their wild, chaotic version of the blues is a kissing cousin to rockabilly at times, with the tempo shifts and rising and falling intensity of “Goin’ Back to Memphis” channeling the frenetic energy of those early rockers. Further, “Teenage Heart Attack” borrows liberally from the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” lifting a few riffs and a whole lot of attitude out of the original, yet emerging with something vaguely interesting and entirely catchy.
Not to belabor the point, but the Soledad Brothers are basically the White Stripes about five years ago, but with a lot more of the lazy blues drawl and a lot less of the frantic garage punk assault. The cynical among us might be tempted to call them predictable one-trick ponies, or even worse, second generation George Thorogood rip-offs, which really wouldn’t be at all fair. What you hear on Live is a group of musicians whose genuine love of working out the dynamic of the blues in a live setting is obvious. The aesthetic is intentionally and precisely sloppy, just enough so to allow the genuine feeling of the music to show through all the distortion and pounding rhythms. Ultimately, listening to them is a simple, primal pleasure, similar to plugging in an electric guitar, cranking it up to 10, and wailing on a power chord until the neighbors call to complain. It’s not intellectual; it’s intuitive. And it’s always better live.

Andrew – Happy to Be Here

If his work with The Bus Stop Label is any indication – and I get the feeling that it is – Andrew Sandoval must have Pet Sounds stuck on a permanent loop inside of his head. The latest offering from Andrew, appropriately titled Happy to Be Here, is a carefully studied exercise in 1960s pop nostalgia, a kind of half-knowing tribute to The Beatles and Beach Boys and scores of guitar-driven pop acts who have dominated airwaves for the last 30 years.

Happy to Be Here is, essentially, a set of 11 songs that wouldn’t be out of place if they crawled onto the Top 40 charts in the fall of 1965. Each of the songs is dominated by guitars – no distortion here, kiddies – and Andrew’s tender vocals, sugar-coated with Hammond organ, tack piano and the obligatory backing “oohs” and “aahs,” and accented by the swells and flourishes of a small orchestra. Andrew has clearly done his homework, and every verse and chorus seems very clearly plotted and diagramed, everything cunningly produced and set in its right place. Though none of Andrew’s songs tread much past the inherent four-minute pop song boundary, he manages to reference everyone from The Beach Boys and The Beatles to Elvis Costello to current pop troubadours like Jude and Ben Folds while not sounding exactly like any one of them.

The album opening “I Wish You Would,” “It May Never Happen,” and “Friend of Mine” are toe-tapping pop songs of the variety you would have heard in That Thing You Do. They get the blood moving, and you can help but imagine them being performed in front of Ed Sullivan himself. But, ultimately, they also seem to evaporate from memory a bit once the disc stops turning. Among the record’s poppy ruminations, “Now” stands out as the result of some Hammond organ contributions that sound close to “96 Teardrops”-era Question Mark and The Mysterians. The pseudo-balladry of “Allyn White” is saved by occasional musical diversions, such as Andrew’s brief, light-hearted verse of “bop-ba-dops.” Elsewhere, the moans and wails of strings and horns step out of the background and further into the limelight, adding dimension and some sincere emotional punch to songs like “High Tower,” “Strange Dreams,” and “Tears Anyway.”

“He Can Fly,” however, may be one of the most surprising and rewarding tracks on Happy to Be Here. Starting with the giddy, repetitive bounce of a toy piano, the song begins to soar – pun fully intended here, everyone – with the use of pitch-perfect backing harmonies from guest vocalist Tom Dawes and a lone violin. With all of this lush pop density, you hardly notice that the song begins and ends sans electric guitar, the lifeblood of many a pop song. Andrew pulls off similar results, though to more reflective ends, on the album-closing “Happy to Be Here.” Though it’s weighed down by some overly obvious lyrics – “At the end of the day, we turn out all the lights / And then we start to think about our lives / Yeah, yeah” – the song uses bits of piano, strings and layers of sugary vocals to an almost majestic effect. This is a song without guitars or drums, mind you, that could make a pop junkie like Ben Folds cry. Unfortunately, just when you’re waiting for it to let loose and make a bigger closing statement in its second half, it sort of fades, a solitary organ note left lingering to close the record.

If there’s one down side to the proceedings, however, it may be that the record is so careful to not extend itself beyond its self-imposed boundaries that it never quite defines or distinguishes itself. Andrew is obviously a capable songwriter and performer, but he doesn’t lend so much to the pop canon as he does display his idolatry for it. In his voice, at times, we can almost hear the soft-spoken pop musings of Jim O’Rourke circa Eureka and Insignificance. Thinking of O’Rourke – and how he has taken pop structures and orchestral splendor and mutated them into his own sonic devices – one begins to realize how derivative a work Happy to Be Here seems to be. It’s no so much a pop masterpiece as it is a cleverly produced pop apprentice-piece.

Then again, there are scores of indie pop scenesters who would probably sell the whole of their Kinks and Zombies collections – not to mention all those Pet Sounds outtakes – to sound half as good as Andrew does on much of his latest release. Happy to be here? Well, the company’s good and more than a few will probably says its one of 2003′s best-produced pieces of guitar pop. I know one person who’d be more than thrilled to come along for the ride. Does anyone have Burt Bacharach’s number?

Frances 8 – Half Whole

From the diary of Morton Excelsior, Boy Genius
Dear Diary: Today, the unthinkable happened. I’m positive that I went to bed a 15 year-old male, but when I woke up this morning, stretching and yawning, I realized that somehow I’d somehow switched places with a 16 year-old girl! It must have had to do with all the experimentation I’d done with my GPS, the microwave, and that damn Makeoutclub thing. I can only assume that the effects will wear off after a while, so in the interim, I suppose I’ll have to bide my time.
Dear Diary: After exhausting the recreational possibilites of jumping up and down in front of the mirror, I’ve started to search for entertainment. The only CD I didn’t recognize among the midst of Tori Amos singles and Portishead bootlegs was this Frances 8 CD. As my older sister has ruined the aforementioned artists for me by playing them ad nauseum, I can only hope that Half Whole will provide some sort of alternative.
Dear Diary: How ironic that I should have chosen to use the word “alternative” in my previous entry – this album is nothing but an amalgamation, an appropriation, of all of the various bands that have come before them! The first track, “Dry Socket,” only distinguishes itself from mid-97 radio gluck by combining the occasional quasi-Dolores O’Rierdan yowl with jangly guitars – that’s right! It uses The Cranberries as a stepping stone to memorability! I am confused, and not just because I’ve inherited ovaries overnight. How is this still in vogue?
At least the musicians are competent – while the cellist manages to make this all smack fairly heavily of Rasputina, the singer has quite a nice voice, and the band is tight. Whoever produced this certainly wasn’t pushing the envelope, but they’ve got good equipment. More on this later; I need to eat something.
Dear Diary: I either just took my first birth control pill or swallowed a breath mint – either way, I’m trying to successfully maintain this body until I switch back into my own. I certainly hope this girl isn’t mucking about in my lab too much. God, may she be as restrained and meek about my equipment as this Frances 8 band are with their music! I’m on track four and haven’t been able to distinguish a song since the first one. Since when does the world need a bunch of mid-tempo rock songs without hooks? Like this second song, “Shine” – this verse smacks of mid-90s modern rock radio, somewhere between the Gin Blossoms and Korn – the instrumentation is so formulaic that you don’t even notice it.
Dear Diary: I’ve checked this album out and it seems like it was self-released, which makes sense, to an extent. Given the prolieferance of tracks like “Ride” or “Is He There?” which contain almost no dynamism except when certain instruments are removed or replaced into the mix, it seems apparent that this band didn’t have to answer to any higher-ups or run the tracks by anyone with industry experience before they were released. I feel as though they tried to emulate Portishead’s sense of constant unease or PJ Harvey’s older Albini-produced morning-after dismay without doing their homework, and ended up with an album-wide dull hum instead. (The exception is the last track, which recalls the dismal Smashing Pumpkins tacked-on audio experiment “Spaced” by containing nothing except processed guitar mess and vocal proclamations. Ugh.) You can tell which songs were slated to be the “rockers” or the “ballads” if you listen closely, but Frances 8 never push their envelope farther than a tentative bend – and the end result is that not only do they sound generic, but their songs don’t even vary enough to stand out from one another.
Oh! I can feel myself slipping back to my old body! I feel as though I had so much left to do as a woman – and yet, perhaps I can learn from this experience, spent as it was critiquing this album – I vow to never spend my time middling as much as Frances 8! My works yearn to be paid the attention they deserve, and not to wallow in mediocrity! I must strive to – I – oh!

Various Artists – Pulse from Mid-America

Rob Smith must be a proud man. Anatomy Records, his small, independent label out of downtown Indianapolis, boasts an impressive roster of talent. To showcase these artists, he’s released Pulse from Mid-America, an album that gives a taste of the sounds of 17 up-and-coming bands from the Midwest that have yet to make their mark.
The eclectic compilation ranges from noisy pop-punk (Mike Dixon, The Coke Dares, Sex Tiger) to Brit-influenced pop (Pop Lolita, Brando) to more mellow, introspective sounds (Impossible Shapes, Early Day Miners, Pious Companion). The strongest tracks on this compilation are the slower more thought-out arrangements. The country riff “Plastic Flower” by Pious Companion delivers some pretty guitar and harmonica as well as the easy vocals of Mike Klinge. “Ease of Mind” by Early Day Miners is another standout with its achingly slow guitar and plaintive, haunting vocals (“Something you did / something you said”). Tham Nahem, a solo artist whose work conjures up a mid-western Gandaddy mixed with the Eels on proves his mettle on “Artichoke.”
Some tunes are too much, too overwhelming to take in with just one track. These bands might be better served by listening to one of their complete records. Bands like Racebannon, whose nine-minute epic, “Grow Up and Die,” has the pace of a punk song but the length of a John Bonham solo. The guitar work on “Cold Drinks and Cold Shoulders” by The Romance Morgue is served up at a breakneck pace, while the tortured vocals are indecipherable.
However the album does present its share of memorable tracks, full of energy and passion. These numbers include the stormy sounds of The Coke Dares‘ “Emergency Room Blues,” the unusual allure of Mt. Gigantic‘s “Treasures…” and the friendly pop sounds of Even Homer Nods‘ “Chinatown.”
The compilation offers a welcome road trip through a music scene that many would not otherwise know about, let alone listen to at one sitting. Some hardworking bands out in the heartland are toiling hard to be heard, and Smith has his hand on that pulse.

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