There aren’t many recognizable participants here, with the most notable being mid-90s one-hit wonders Fastball, who line-drive their revved-up spin on the Let It Be classic “Androgynous.” Several remakes of Mpls finest are slotted on radically different trajectories here, a prime example being The Asylum Street Spankers bluegrass-ified “Treatment Bound.” Most of So What’s contributors actually “stick to the script,” so to speak, but you’ll be hard pressed to find any that exude one tenth the passion and fervor of Paul Westerberg and Co, as if these bands were striving to be intentionally lackluster if you can believe that. So What doesn’t suck, but to varying degrees it disappoints, especially when held up to 2006’s thoroughly consistent Mats tribute We’ll Inherit the Earth on 1-2-3-4 Go! Records. Austin, TX "So What," is to my knowledge the second commercially released Replacements tributes, preceded, by Sorry Ma, Forgot to Let Out the Cat, also a location specific compilation that I happened to post last year. Here’s my final Austin spotlight post, at least perhaps until next year’s SXSW. BTW, a Tugboat Annie songs (I believe, "More" from The Space Around You), was featured on a commercial. Check out the Myspace link above for album tracks and links to downloadable demos and live shows. A trio of releases on Big Top Records, found them evening out their trademark dynamics with ever-improving songwriting that was just wrought enough to move the quartet to the outskirts of the neo-emo movement, at least for certain backpack toting listeners. Tugboat eventually emigrated to Boston, MA, but ironically, as the old adage of "absence makes the heart grown fonder" goes, the band's Buffalo fanbase grew exponentially after their departure. Helmed by the raspy throated Mike Bethmann, Tugboat Annie's earliest endeavors were wonderfully, melodic examples of the Pixies (and perhaps more significantly, Nirvana) soft verse/loud chorus formula, employed flawlessly on their opening cut "Nine More." It will no doubt bring warm and fuzzy memories of the band's shows held in their homey Main Stream loft in downtown Buffalo. I could write much about Failure's markedly improved work that was to follow Comfort, but you can hear if for yourself (if you have yet to do so already) by picking up Fantastic Planet. Via even the most lucid of vantage points, Comfort's murkiness is undeniable, but this collection of drum machine-enhanced prototypes quite literally sheds some light on an otherwise squeamish subject. Listening to Comfort is akin to gazing at a newly overturned log in the woods through a pair of cloudy glasses, to help buffer the sight of the lecherous undergrowth (in this case, the "buffer" being Steve Albini's crisp, airtight engineering).
A perhaps unintentional by-product of the “post-grunge” movement, Failure’s maiden voyage was a smoldering but alluringly heavy rock record, at least to those with the patience to lend a slightly bent ear.
Though evoking much warmer sentiments and sonic expansiveness on their second and third albums ( Magnified and Fantastic Planet respectively), Failure's nascent Comfort remained in stark, insular contrast to these later records. denizens, who maintained a consistent nucleus of guitarist/mouthpiece Ken Andrews and bassist Greg Edwards (later of Autolux), reached an outstretched tentacle to me with a promo of their 1992 debut album, Comfort, and I've been mesmerised heretofore.
One of the best kept secrets of the '90s, these L.A. Failure have been a major league favorite of mine for some seventeen years, but I've long resisted posting any of their material, as they have in recent years made many of their rarities commercially available – that is with the exception of these six tracks.
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