White Animals - Ecstasy (1984, Dread Beat)

I had a request for this on the heels of White Animals' self-titled album which I shared a couple months back.  Popular local favorites, this Nashville crew had a penchant for churning out immensely vibrant power pop in the mold of the Plimsouls, Producers and early Marshall Crenshaw among other key touchstones of the era.  As the phrase goes, when the White Animals were on they were on big time, and for succulent, albeit a tad conventional pop/rock, you won't do much better than "You Started Something," "Don't Care," and the stunning title track.  There is one rather big misstep permeating Ecstasy's grooves, a long-winded reading of Them's "Gloria" (popularized by the Doors of course).  Absorbing half of side A and clocking in at over nine minutes, the Animals could have substituted a minimum of two more originals in place of this needless dreck, but such injustices are completely out of our control I suppose.  A thorough assessment of the White Animals can be found here.

01. Ecstasy
02. Goodnight and Goodbye
03. Gloria
04. Dreamland
05. Don't Care
06. This Girl of Mine
07. You Started Something
08. For Lovers Only

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White Animals - s/t (1986, Dread Beat)

Not that I'm trying to best my competition over at Shotgun Solution blog, but they recently posted a hodge podge of tunes by Nashville's long put-to-pasture White Animals.  Coincidentally, when I was used record plundering last month I found vinyl editions of their self-titled effort, and it's 1987 follow-up In the Last Days, the former of which I'm hosting tonight.   The White Animals espoused their fair share of '80s, "modern rock" trappings, and given it's studio sheen this record might slot comfortably with the output of say, the Hooters.  The silver lining?  This quintet wasn't far removed from such 415 Record staples as Wire Train and the Red Rockers either.  Despite a drought of innovation, White Animals is still appealing, and had the group's luck panned out a little more favorably, a mainstream fanbase would have been entirely palpable, if not inevitable. For those of ya'll in need of a shortcut, The Animals brightest embers flicker across side one.

01. Help Yourself
02. It's a Jungle
03. Big Shot
04. Don't Want to Hear That Song
05. Caught Up in the Dread
06. She's So Different
07. Not Another Love Song
08. I Can't Wait
09. Old-fashioned Day
10. Tristan's Woe

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White Animals - In the Last Days (1987, Dread Beat)

The fittingly titled parting shot for Nashville mainstays the White Animals, didn't find them going out on a crescendo, but by the mid '80s their returns were gradually diminishing anyway.  In the Last Days is perhaps the least essential album in their catalog, but not without saving graces in the from of ringing guitar pop tuneage like "You Bring the Best Out in Me," and "She's Gonna Break It."  White Animals subscribed to the most linear variant of power pop, and even that categorization was loose to begin with, but they long resisted the temptation to indulge in the souped-up studio gloss and tricky of the era.  The only exceptions to this rule might be on Last Days two covers, namely David Essex's "Rock On" and Marley's "Could You Be Loved," both of which suffer from uncharacteristic "embellishment" to put it politely.  Nothing intolerable mind you, with the latter being kinda enjoyable in modest doses.  You can check out my previous writings on 1984 Ecstasy and their penultimate self-titled disk which arrived two years later. 

01. Don't Treat Me Like a Dog
02. You Bring the Best Out in Me
03. Last Five Years
04. You Don't Know
05. Rock On
06. Lonely View
07. She's Gonna Break It
08. Could You Be Loved
09. I Thought That
10. A Prison Song

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White Animals - Nashville Babylon ep (1981, Dread Beat)

My apologies for making you wait so long for some new tunes this week.  If you're a long time visitor of his site you may have come across this Nashville combo before.  In fact, I've shared three whole White Animals long-players that came out between 1984-87.  They struck me as erstwhile purveyors of the more pedestrian end of the college rock thing...but their first ep, Nashville Babylon was quite the horse of a different color.  Behold, six no-frills rootsy cuts of unadulterated rock 'n roll in the manner of the Flamin' Groovies, by a crack quartet  wielding an acumen that could realistically slot anywhere between the Easybeats and George Thorogood.  The Animals weren't quite Nuggets, but vastly removed from the mainstream FM hoi polloi of the day. Two covers on this ep make their intentions relatively well known, specifically a hearty rendering of the Yardbirds signature cut "For Your Love," and kicking off side-B, the blues-pop pearl "Tobacco Road" (originally done by the Nashville Teens, later popularized by Johnny Winter and others). There's a discernible purity to this disk that never quite translated to W/A's later records, as good as some of them were.  Enjoy.

01. Old Jazzmaster
02. For Your Love
03. Only Sorrow
04. Tobacco Road
05. I Need Somebody to Love Me
06. I Need You So

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V/A - Laughtour ep (Mighty Lemon Drops, Ocean Blue. etc) (1990)

In a case of wonderful and purely coincidental serendipity I prevent you with this gem of a record - but I'm going to leave you in suspense and explain myself more fully towards the end of this write-up regarding the fortuitous aspect.  First and foremost, the era of thoughtful and well-curated major label promo-only releases has loooong been phased out - but then again so has quality music from the majors in general. I'm grateful to have lived to see the last gasps of this epoch, and Sire's Laughtour compilation is a delightful example of one of those "extras" bestowed to radio stations/record stores prior to the internet shaking things up - and eventually spitting out everything positive, worthy and fun like so much stale gum.  

The concept of Laughtour was fairly simple - an eight song record featuring non-LP goodies and rarities from three Sire Records bands who found themselves bundled up on a 20+ date package tour of the States in 1990.  I'm not sure who signed off on the song-quotients-per band, but The Mighty Lemon Drops were accorded an entire side of wax unto themselves.  Any why would anyone complain when they lead this affair off with an inspired reading of the Standells' cult-classic "Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White?"  We're also gifted with a decent b-side, "Forever Home at Heart," and a pair of captivating live cuts, including the Lemon Drop's early single, "Like an Angel."  The then-up-and-coming The Ocean Blue are also present with a more than solid outtake from their 1989 debut in the guise of "Renaissance Man," plus an alternate mix of the relentlessly jangly "The Circus Animals." 

But it's the final artist in this trifecta, one relatively ignored by yours truly, John Wesley Harding, whom dazzles with a double shot of magic, out-impressing just about anything I've encountered on his proper albums.  His acoustic go-round of "Devil in Me" leaps off the grooves with the wit and tuneful acumen of Billy Bragg, almost as if JWH was born to be his doppelganger.  As for the synchronous angle I alluded to early, when I went to digitize this last week I wasn't conscious of the fact that Harding's second cut here, coincided with the fortieth anniversary (to the day, in fact) of the song's topic "July 13, 1985!"  For those of you who need me to spell it out, the paean concerns Live Aid, which a gaggle of us Gen-X'ers are commemorating this very weekend.  The song is part flashback, part confessional and wholly spot-on... and I shan't give much more away.  Enjoy.

01. Mighty Lemon Drops – Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White

02. Mighty Lemon Drops – Forever Home At Heart

03. Mighty Lemon Drops - Like An Angel (Live Club Version)

04. Mighty Lemon Drops – At Midnight (Live Club Version)

05. The Ocean Blue – Renaissance Man

06. The Ocean Blue – The Circus Animals (P.A. Mix)

07. John Wesley Harding – The Devil In Me (acoustic)

08. John Wesley Harding – July 13th 1985

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VA - Teen Line No. 3 (covering letters R to Z, 1974-89)

Well, it looks like you've made the first two Teen Line compilation disks I posted a few months ago enormously popular, download-wise, and I'm happy to present the third (and most satisfying so far) installment.  For those new to the table what the heck is Teen Line all about?   Essentially, the Hyped to Death bootleg reissue collective made a series of cd-r compilations featuring arcane indie/power pop acts circa late-70s through the '80s that never quite saw the light of day in the digital realm.  The curator of these packed and well annotated releases not only possesses a treasure-trove of a record collection, but more importantly the acumen for culling the choicest morsels from said wax, be it a privately pressed 45 limited to 500 copies, or something slightly more common.  In short, the Teen Line compilations are a microcosm of what I attempt to offer on this site writ large.

There are selling points aplenty here, including a few acts I was first given exposure to and was subsequently compelled to track down their original vinyl artifacts - The Shakers, White Animals, The Squares, and Rocking Shapes, all of whom have graced the halls of Wilfully Obscure before.  The legendary Shoes make the roster twice, with tunes from their early LP, One in Versailles.  If you're up for more classic power pop, the Spongetones and Scruffs are present and accounted for, as are the Reverbs featuring a pre-Velvet Crush Ric Menck.  There are lots of low-key profilers here that desperately deserved the exposure this disk provided - Turning Curious, The Strand, Z-Rocks, and an early nugget of gold from Trip Shakespeare.  A near-perfect tracklist that you can examine for yourself off to the left. Enjoy!

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Graig Markel - Graig Markel (2012, Recovery) - A brief overview

Upon discovering his Seattle noise-pop trio New Sweet Breath back in 1995, via their first full length, Supersound Speedway, my appreciation for Graig Markel's music grew and grew with each successive record that he had any involvement with, whether it be more outings with NSB, his electronic offshoot Animals at Night, and not the least of which solo recordings.  By my count, 2012's brand new self-titled platter is his sixth under his own name, following up 2007's Via Novella.  Hardly spending the last four years slaving over an ornate, orchestral rock tour de force, a la Brian Wilson in the late '60s, Markel instead returns to the table with a refreshingly lucid batch of ten acoustic songs, tracked straight to analog tape in his domicile studio.

Far from a wordsmith in league with the likes of Waits, Westerberg, or Pollard, Graig Markel's isn't an erudite or arty scribe, rather it's the voice that sinks in so indelibly.  His sparse, no-frills arrangements lend a purity to this collection, perfectly befitting it's melancholic tenor, that wisely eschews any wrought or maudlin transgressions.  Par exemple, "My Last Words," as it's title implies, mines a mournful vein, but no more so than Nick Drake's Pink Moon, a classic he's apparently taken to heart.  Economical yet thoroughly substantive, Markel's balled-esque soliloquies are undeniably straightfoward, but soothingly uplifting.  Graig Markel is available from CD Baby, and on white vinyl through his website, but if you need any further convincing embrace the sound on his Soundcoud page.

Singles Going Single #176 - Graig Markel 7" (1999, -ismist)

You wouldn't know it from the scalding, white-hot cocoon of feedback and tuneful thrust that encompassed virtually every recorded note laid down by Seattle's New Sweet Breath, but lurking in the midst of that gloriously, amp-ridden raucous was frontman Graig Markel, who when separated from his cohorts (bassist Nicholas Rock and skinsman Jeff Hazel) was adept at composing some of the most contemplative and transporting singer-songwriter soundscapes that have ever met this set of ears.  Really, the guy's that good, and all the proof you need lies in the grooves of his initial volley of solo records (Verses on Venus, Hard Grammar, among others) and for that matter this single, which appears on -ismist Records, a label that Graig goes back a long way with.  The lucid and sheik, neo-cosmopolitan sumptuousness of "July" and "Sugar in Bloom" find Markel crossing into thresholds that NSB never envisioned, and I like to think serve as an appetizer to those aforementioned full-lengths.  In the years following this humble 45, he turned his muse to the electronica endowed Animals at Night, and even more recently our man is back with some brand new solo jams for you to devour over at his Soundcloud page. 

A. July
B. Sugar in Bloom

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