Album Recommendations | mari@macintosh.garden
Artist: The Amps
Albums are graded on a five-point scale of "Awful-Eh-Good-Great-Classic". I'm highly biased, so don't take it too seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.
Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable. Read the review.
Pacer (1995)
Rock in rehab.
By 1995, Kim Deal was in a rut. The Breeders were on hiatus, and Kelley Deal was in rehab. Kim Deal does what Kim Deal does, though, and that means booze, weed, and garage pop. Pacer, the only release from Tammy Ampersand and Her Magical Amp Band, mixes sloppy and feminine like a rough draft for, well, post-hiatus Breeders. It's not that Kim Deal isn't capable of not playing like the Shaggs after a fifth of vodka, it's an aesthetic choice, and one that certainly ruins weaker tracks like "Empty Glasses". The mixing is just as messy—somebody must've shot this poor album, because it's bleeding all over.
In the end though, the songs win out. The bulk of the tracklist consists of quality tunes that bring to mind fellow Midwest lo-fi enthusiasts Guided By Voices; in fact, "I Am Decided", one of the real highlights here, is actually built from two of their tracks. There's a beauty to this record that overloaded mixes and sloppy playing can't tarnish, most evident on the warm, bubbly, droning fare like "First Revival" and "Bragging Party". Hell, "Full on Idle" proves that even the punkier tracks, when focused, land pretty well (and spits cactus spikes in the face of the later Breeders version to boot). See, even when Kim Deal tries to make something ugly, it turns out lovely anyway. What a curse.
| Essential: | Quintessential: | Non-Essential: | Rating: |
|---|---|---|---|
| "I Am Decided", "First Revival", "Full on Idle" | "Pacer" | "Empty Glasses" | Great |