Monday, July 23, 2007

Liquor Giants - You're Always Welcome (1992)

Unlike a lot of Liquor Giants fans, I wasn't a holdover follower of lead-Giant Ward Dotson's more celebrated project, The Gun Club. As for me, my acquaintanceship with the Giants was the result of tuning into CBC Radio 2 at just the right time (more specifically, on a late Saturday-evening pizza delivery run during the summer of 1999). The tune that won me over was "Paint the Whole Town Blue," from the debut LG album, You're Always Welcome, which you may now download at your leisure for an indefinite period of time. With a dollop of swagger infiltrating the buzzsaw pop of say, late-period Replacements or Let's Active, Ward Dotson's approach is genuine and satisfying, if not particularly innovative. The Liquor Giants would go onto make better albums, but little else in their catalog could scale the heights of the aforementioned "Paint...Blue," as well as their instant-classic (in a perfect world) beer can/shot glass anthem, "I Wanna Get Drunk With You." Just FYI, this album was also released in some countries under the title, America's #1 Recording Artists.

01. Over the Hill
02. Mrs. Griffith
03. Greatest Hit
04. Paint the Whole Town Blue
05. Middle of Nowhere
06. Just Might Cry
07. I Wanna Get Drunk With You
08. The Little Song
09. Lost on Mars
10 My Teeth and Tongue
11. The Jokes On You
12. Fine Line
13. My World

Now available on iTunes and Emusic as America's #1 Recording Artist.

1 comment:

Michael said...

I followed Dotson over from his band the Pontiac Brothers. I didn't know he was in the Gun Club 'til much later. If you like post punk Stonesy rock & roll, the Pontiacs are well worth hearing.