Mood Paint (pre-Pond) demo 1989

It didn't strike me as a remarkable album at first blush when it dropped in 1993, but Pond's debut album for Sub Pop was an ever so slow-charmer, gradually inculcating it's tuneful guitar crunch and sinewy pitch and sway into my cerebellum over the next several years.  Two respectable albums followed - The Practice of Joy Before Death and Rock Collection, but neither quite held a candle to it's immensely more intoxicating precursor.  While there were pre-album singles, there wasn't much evidence of life prior to Pond.  That was until one of my readers contacted me last year and shared a 1989 cassette by an Oregon trio dubbed Mood Paint who contained in their lineup soon to be Pond stalwarts Charles Campbell (guitars/vox) and Chris Brady (vox/bass).  For better or worse, Mood Paint's easy-goes-it penchant didn't carry over to the frenetic and feedback-ridden noise pop that would be uncorked by these very same hands in the Clinton-era.  That being said, the relatively lucid hue of these half-dozen tunes aren't the stuff of embarrassment, rather the product of a humbler, and dare I say, more approachable muse than the one that was about to come roaring to life in Pond.  A big thanks to Jeff for setting me up with everything!

01. When You Get What You Want
02. Cracks and Swirls
03. 25 Years Ago
04. Florida
05. Everything
06. The Dull Earth

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