Oh man, I probably have a lot of these. I have a habit of falling in love with random EPs and early albums of bands that went nowhere (or got big and totally ruined their sound. So theyāre dead to me. cough hop along cough)
Hereās my submission, I love, love, LOVE this EP. And this one is a slightly easier blow to take because Shilpa Ray has had so many iterations if her bands and theyāre all fuckin amazing. But I first discovered her through her first band:
Wow. So have you been diagnosed with terrible taste or are you living in denial?
Just kidding. But go back and listen to their first major release, Get Disowned. A near perfect indie album, with enough punk sensibilities and amazing lyricism to set it apart from the pack. Not to mention itās unique cadence, where you can tell Frances wrote the songs with her guitar, and then had the band fill in. So itās not as produced, because the structure was there. Using the band to fill in those spaces gives the amazing lyrics a true punch of sound, because he music follows the words around the tune. Itās very unique in that right.
Compare the lyrics of Get Idsowned to Bark Your Head off, dog. Itās so clear GD was thought out, not rushed, and it was cared for and labored overā¦And then everything theyāve done since signing to a bigger label was so obviously written with the whole band, probably IN the studio, under the nose of a producer. Itās soā¦pop. Which, if you listen to Francesā early solo stuff and the first ever āHop Alongā album, Is Something Wrong?, youād see thatās not what she does best.
The Hop Along, Queen Ansleis album is really rough and pretty juvenile, but you can still get a sense of what set her apart in songwriting. She had a unique sound thatās been either bought out of her or that she just lost as she ran out of stories to tell.
We can have different opinions on this, but Iām very much of the opinion that even Painted Shut sucks. They lost their sound. Iāll always wonder what wouldāve happened if they never signed to saddle creek and stayed on an even smaller label. I saw them a few times, they were opening for Apples In Stereo and they played Johnny Brendaās. These are all before Painted Shut came out. But I heard the singles from that album and got that sinking feeling. It justā¦changed so much. And I really canāt say enough about how much the lyrical talent was sucked out of her. Because look at the poetry of GD. And then at a song likeā¦Powerful Man. Which is one of he worst songs Iāve ever heard, not even just from bands I like otherwise. Likeā¦the song sucks. The lyrics are trash. And they havenāt gotten better since.