His Name Is Alive Sweetens The Sweet

What we can only hope is a first in a series of album re-releases from their diverse back catalogue, former 4AD supplicates His Name Is Alive have re-mastered and re-issued their long out of print "fake bootleg", King of Sweet.  

Originally available in a limited pressing of 2,000 on the esoteric Perdition Plastics label back in 1993, just shortly after the career-defining Mouth By Mouth album, King of Sweet never pretended, or intended, to be anything other than for HNIA diehards only.

The Wonderfully Weird Uncle Larry

If Les Claypool played the electric guitar, his name would be Billy Judge Baldus, and his band would be Uncle Larry.

Miles Nielsen's Lethargic Start, Indefinite Legacy

It isn’t impossible to properly arrange the songs on a predominantly weak album into an order sufficient enough to carry the whole effort. It’s really not even remotely difficult.  One could make a veritable list of albums that have become classics, yet only had 4 or 5 solid tracks on them (I won’t start naming names, because that will only instigate a never ending debate wherein no one will agree and no one will win. So please, just accept the statement and move on).  Miles Nielsen’s debut album suffers just such a misfortune – and even with well over half of the tracks on it being quite good.  The result, however, of a poorly organized tracklist is an album that sputters and fails to immediately ignite, and thus fails to get a fair shake by anyone lacking the endurance to tolerate a slow start – which, these days, is everyone. The shame about such a tragedy befalling this album, is that it doesn't deserve the first impression it makes.

Those Humdingers, The Hemingers!

Few things rank lower on the tolerability index than cover bands; and even fewer still than cover bands whose catalogue consists of the musically annoying (as far as rock and roll was concerned, anyway) and soundalike decade of the mid 1950's to 1960's.  Michigan's The Hemingers are just such a band - in a way - but not.  See, they've nailed down a delivery that serves to shake the living shit out of those annoying rock 'n roll classics, and make them endlessly amusing.