The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that 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.
A highly appealing sugary wasting away.
Superdrag is power pop, emphasis on the pop. You get the sense the heaviness is just there to enhance the moodiness of the lyrics, and Superdrag are more concerned with writing very pretty songs with harmonized guitars, catchy vocal melodies, and surprisingly complex basslines than flooring you with how hard they rock. You might pick up on a slight punk influence, as slight as the Pixies influence (mostly in the squawking bent guitar leads). Long forgotten, too pop for the alt kids and too alt for the pop kids, it's a shame. What they do, they do phenomenally well.
If you know anything from Regretfully Yours, it's the "Just What I Needed" rewrite "Sucked Out", but that one's just the tip of the iceberg. You'll pick up on plenty of references to the struggles of an addictive personality--chain smoking ("Carried"), heavy drinking ("Destination Ursa Major"), masturbation ("Nothing Good is Real")--but it's not steeped in that angst, it makes you sing along to it. Don't listen to the rest of the retrospective coverage of this one; it might be glossier than their earlier efforts, but that's relative. It's a batch of quality songs with just the right amount of sauce, and they will all get stuck in your head. Suck it and see. His hand could use a break.
| Essential: | Quintessential: | Non-Essential: | Rating: |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Destination Ursa Major", "Garmonbozia", "N.A. Kicker" | "Slot Machine/Phaser" | I guess "What If You Don't Fly" (but not really) |  |
A grubby little gas that'll get you high.
"Could it be real?/I got nothing left to steal/And I'm too fucked up to feel/Give me a shot," the harmonies chime sweetly over the fuzzy, dark instrumental of The Fabulous 8-Track Sound of Superdrag's opener "Sugar". Recorded between late 1994 and early 1995 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee during the same "Bender" sessions that would demo the majority of their major label debut Regretfully Yours, Fabulous is proof positive that lo-fi doesn't have to be challenging. The guitars are grubby, the drums are thin and clicky, and the sonics are clearly not top shelf, but Superdrag's instantly likable 90s pop rock perseveres anyway in big, instantly endearing fashion. I can attest after a rather alcoholized evening spent with "Sugar" on repeat--it's good stuff.
Fabulous splits the difference between gentle verses and tight, hooky choruses with little regard for much else. Lyrically, Superdrag is at their best when they're maladaptive, so singer-guitarist John Davis is all too happy to seethe at you about bumming around high and useless on "Bloody Hell", soberly mark the end of a clingy relationship on "Really Thru", or bargain with a girl who's taken a vow of chastity to let him plug her nonetheless on "Load". If there's one issue with the goods here, it's that the bummer run of "Liquor" through "6/8" has a great way of killing the pacing of the EP--like an evening spent dousing yourself in Captain Morgan, though, that's perhaps the point.
| Essential: | Quintessential: | Non-Essential: | Rating: |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Sugar", "Bloody Hell", "Load" | "Really Thru" | "6/8" |  |
INDEX | CHANGELOG | CONTACT
ART | MODDING | MUSIC | WRITING
GAME REVIEWS | MUSIC REVIEWS
NOFI | LOFI
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