American Alternative music reviews

This is the most emotionally driven spoken word CD I have ever had the delight of coming across. Lydia's super-emotional verbal abuse drags you along with her; she cries and you want to cry... she screams and you want to scream. This is one of those rare listening experiences that changes one after hearing it. At times, it is extremely hard to listen to, just as living life can be hard; it perfectly reflects the bleak understanding of life's lack of meaning.

These discs are absolutely essential for any fan of Don Bajema; the other material is decent but I wouldn't buy 'Our Fathers' on the strength of it alone.

this album is awesome. the fair brothers are awesome. i mean who else could pull off the velvet underground's "european sun". this is an album that everyone should have in there collection

One of the first post-hardcore bands and records(1981). Every song is amazing.The other records are great too. More jazz influenced and more experimental.The songs here are short,dark with great riffs.A different hardcore record.

An awesome band from the 80's with an unprecedented sound, made all the more jazz/noir by the guitar genius of Joe Biaza. If The Doors were shifted to the eighties (and not the sixties or seventies)- they would sound like Saccharine Trust.

But ST are very original in their 'washed-up' street blues/punk, and are a band which helps to define the SST label perhaps more than any other.

The last song- 'Human Certainty'- still gives me the chills. I remember those early-mid eighties days, those hot LA summer nights, and having thoughts like these...

Paul Burch is a find - one listen to "Sage Advice" and I knew he wasn't posing. This is NOT alt-country.

this work of the gun club is a little more melodic. it's has many great songs, i realy like the eskimo blue day song (this song wants to make you jump into a car and drive around ^^)the sound quality is great, so are the live acts for the divinity part. if you can find this album somewhere.. you should definitly buy it !

Like any of the Gun Club's albums, this cd is somewhat hard to find (although not nearly the collector's item that Miami or The Las Vegas Story currently are), and if you are lucky enough to stumble across a copy you should definitely buy it. It showcases the end stage of Jeffrey Lee Pierce's creative life. The songs are a lot mellower and more slickly produced than any of his previous works, and even though that robs them of a little fire, they are still a testament to Pierce's craftsmanship. In a manner somewhat akin to Prince, Pierce was able to make very expressive and melodic songs out of seemingly the sparest and most basic parts. His ability to blend words and tunes together placed him on the top shelf of rock songwriters, although I hesitate to use the dreaded "p-word" when describing his lyrics. By this stage in his career, arbitrary terms like "punk rock" or "rootsy" were irrelevant. That stretch of road was behind him. In fact, I see a great deal of similarity between the latter day Gun Club and the latter day Led Zeppelin. Some of the bluesy intensity of earlier masterpieces is clearly missing, but has been replaced by a keen subtlety that has a soothing rather than cathartic feel. On the Pastoral Hide and Seek half of this release, the band scratches out a few slow to mid tempo numbers that are equal parts ballad and funk, my favorite being the swervy "St. John's Divine", with its Marquee Moon-ish verses and Zeppelin-lite choruses. The Divinity half of the album continues with more of the same, although with the tempos turned up a notch at places. "Sorrow Knows" might be one of the tightest grooves Pierce ever laid down, and owes a great deal to the nimble fingers of bass player Romi Mori. "Richard Speck" is also a great song, showcasing some of that wonderful harmony of sighs you might've already heard on previous albums, such as Miami.

If you are brand new to this band, you may want to supplement this purchase with a copy of either "Fire of Love" or "Mother Juno", as this album is more of an epilogue to that segment of the band's lifetime. If you are already a fan, however, you ought to have sought this out long ago. So go now and find it quickly, before the ebay prices skyrocket.

I lucked up on this group one night as they were opening for a fellow North/South. Carolina native, Edwin McCain. These guys can rock. They are fresh and new and can make you wanna get up and rock or hold a loved one tight. Stoned and Reeling is my personal favorite, but "it's all good" I look forward to more albums....

One of the year's most overlooked albums. Nourallah writes gorgeous pop songs, but he's done more than that. Each song explores themes and issues raised elsewhere on the album, but from new perspectives (different narrators, different points in time, etc.) without ever being heavy-handed. It's a very strong album worthy of attention from anyone interested in songcraft or the album-as-album style of art.

This record is one of the best I have heard in a long, long time. Absolute pop perfection. Simple, sweet, beautiful, and intense all at the same time. If you're a fan of the heyday of pop; Beatlesesque tunes without sounding too much like the Beatles; than this album is definitely for you.

Some of their best stuff is on here. "Buzz or Howl" tends towards abrasive, Pere Ubu-ish noise with guitar thrash backing. It's mostly pretty great and the band never sounded more muscular or tighter. And that's saying something. As on previous records, they are extremely intense and very ambitious.

"Project Mersh" (mersh is short for commercial) is less ambitious, points up for the funny cover though. They try to make a more conventional, acceptable rock sound on here. Mike Watt's songs remain too idiosynchractic and insular to really hit that mark, but Boon's "Cheerleaders" and "King of the Hill" stand with the band's best, and would have been heard at the time were there justice in the world.

This album reminded me of my teens in the 80's, when alternative really meant alternative, and the songs could vary from rauchy punk to bouncy synth-pop (all with great lyrics). One of the best series I've come across--I have the entire series. It's a great mix of great bands that you rarely get to hear anymore--everyone knows the bands and the songs, but they're never on the radio. (Which is kind of why they started glomming such diverse styles of music under the heading "alternative" in the first place.) Good listening.