Lulu's 99-Cent Reviews

If you are looking for the next Radiohead, read no further. These are  the gems we found in the clearance bin at our local music store. That's right, 99 cents! These days, you can't even find a deal like that at a 99-cent store. Each album was selected at random (we closed our eyes, and pointed) and lovingly reviewed. Enjoy!


Trunk Federation – The Curse of Miss Kitty (1998)

This band name/album title combo is a real head-scratcher. Who is Miss Kitty? What is her curse? What is a trunk federation? And 1998 was such a choice year for music. I can't put the CD in fast enough.


And then the noisy “Devil in a Catskin” greets me with playtime accents, screechy singing, and garage-band guitars (the real kind, not the loops from the program). The song’s bridge makes me think they ought to have taken the time spent running into their amps with their guitars in creative ways to find a real keyboardist; it reads like a child interrupted by a spaceship landing on top of a guitar solo. This band is over its head in feedback and fuzz.


Fortunately, despite the fussy instrumentation, you can make out all the lyrics. “Truck Lover” is a tough read, but worth the extra attention: “She’s a truck lover; she loves her truck.” If you aren’t floored by that last one, then you might tap into the provocative “I Don’t Like Mondays,” which muses, “Beat no reasons because there are no reasons, what reasons do you need to be shown?” Good point. Got me there!


Just when you’ve gotten used to the weirdly moody change of pace at the center of the album with “Providence” and “Levitations and Disappearances,” the Trunk Federates throw in the ultimate curveball. Who can top the tortured, violin-inflected polka music of “Magnifico the Magician”? Who saw it coming? I sure didn’t. The things you miss when you only listen to the first three songs of a CD…


Trunk Federation on Myspace


Mark Germino – Rank and File (1995)

Here’s a deep cut from one of Tennessee’s undiscovered greats, Mark Germino. You will swoon at the honest acoustic guitar and raspy, introspective Bruce-Springsteen-Does-Bob-Dylan vocals. In “Poet’s Lament,” when Germino sings, “They stroked his pride and they kissed his gun,” you know exactly what he means – not because you’ve ever held a gun (you haven’t, have you), but because you feel the message in your bones. Is that an angel? No it’s Mark Germino.


My mom calls this “The Old Cow Died to It” music. Nearly every song begins with a mix of Wurlitzer organ and countrified guitars. Apparently this is the best way to ease into Germino’s preferred topics of small-town politics and subtle social ideology. In “Rosemary’s New Constitution,” he wails, “All the blacks own the food and the whites own the fuel.” What marvelous insight! Please explain? Meanwhile, “I’ll Always Be Your Man,” is a sweet, guitar-dappled tribute to man’s superiority to woman. You tell ‘em like it is, Germy.


Mark Germino on Myspace


Cyclefly – Crave (2002)

Nu metal got a just a little bit sadder the day Cyclefly’s sophomore album Crave came out.


What does stress sound like? The first few seconds of Cyclefly’s hit, “No Stress.” Rest assured, the anxiety ends there. The song quickly shifts to something more like KoRn on ludes – and without all of Jonathan Davis’ semi-redeeming angry scatting. This song is actually kind of sing-songy in some places, which seems accidental, judging by the way front man Declan O’Shea is growling every chance he gets.


But hold on, what’s this? Album namesake track “Crave” absolutely takes a page from the boy bands tonally and the album dissolves into textbook Emo from here out. Take, for example, “Fallen Wishes,” in which O’Shea whines, “Fallen wishes, fallen wishes\ take me away from here my dear it’s been dead\ for years” or moderately more digestible “Drive” in which he sings, “I dream of a place to go, dream of a place to hide\ Just get out and drive away forever, drive away.\ I’d feel no pain on an island far away.\ From your road rage and your slow drain and your human waste.\” Human waste? Ew, dude.


Cyclefly Official Website


Skiploader – From Can Through String (1996)

Skiploader’s band name almost made me want to skip loading their CD into my itunes, but that’s just not the name of the game. The music actually sounds like a more wholesome version of Cyclefly’s shiz. Think: your older brother’s band. These guys are hot nerds, which I know because I looked at the insert. And you can tell which is the lead singer – he’s the wide-eyed pretty boy with the converse sneakers and dark hair slightly longer than everyone else’s hair. Of course, they are all sitting on beanbag chairs (in 1996).


Why am I yammering on about the band’s look instead of its sound? The look is vaguely Weezer; the sound is vaguely… well, it’s just vague. The hooks are boring, the singing is mediocre, and the guitar and drums are numbing. The music isn’t much to sink one’s teeth into. In fact, I bet if you measured the sound waves for this album the graph would be an unbroken sinusoid (which would be really lame). The most inspired track is also the shortest: “Untitled,” five blissful seconds of a guitar's decaying chord. Easy boys, is this an audition for the Clueless soundtrack or is it rock ‘n’ roll? Your call.


Skiploader on Myspace


This Perfect Day – C-60 (1997)

Short of tribute or cover bands, it always puzzles me when bands name themselves after another artist’s work. Why would you want to compete with someone else’s established genius? Or, otherwise, attempt to live up to it? This particular band, whether or not they themselves know it, takes its name from science fiction novelist Ira Levin’s 1970 book, This Perfect Day. I doubt that Ira Levin would smile at being compared to such a mediocre late ‘90s band (even the album art sucks), but I will admit that I don’t hate them.


The sweetly simple synths, cool-guy guitar, and soaring chorus (“We could have been FRIE-EH-EHHH-ENDs… Forever”) of the opening track, “Could Have Been Friends” (really reaching there), are nothing you’d play someone you want to impress, but you would certainly offend fewer people than if you played Mark Germino’s opening track. And don’t think about letting the album play uninterrupted because, right away, the second track blows.


You think track three, “Dolphin,” could possibly be strange or ironic, and therefore possibly worthwhile; but nope, it’s really just about dolphins (“If I was a dolphin\lost and lonely\in the sea\would you go\swimming\beyond the coral reefs\looking for me?”) The intro synths are kind of edgy and intriguing in the track that follows, but the song quickly splashes apart into another saccharin aquatic-themed love song: “Fishtank.” What is this, a group of defunct scuba instructors with an excess of synthesizers and guitars? By the end of the progressively lame CD, you are missing the sea-pop of earlier tracks.


This Perfect Day on Myspace


-LM