garage

Rip It Up, Issue 168, 1 July 1991, Page 29

garage

HALLELUJAH PICASSOS Peanut Butter Now.. J (Dinosaur Tapes) "Psychedelic reggae" crows Roland — t welcome to a three song cassette from Hallelujah Picassos showcasing three J completely different facets of the band. 'Peanut Butter' is a schleppy shuffly < reggae ode to Peanut Butter (?); 'Black I Spade Picasso Core' drops into low : grunge guitar gear topped off with i Beastie Boyish vocals from Roland , Rorschach (the Hallelujah's ace spade), while 'Shivers' gives guitarist Peter i McLennan a chance to prove that not only can he make movies and play i reggae he can also write a touching | ballad. This tope is a tasty morsel before the album due later this year, check it out. ( Send $5.30 to Picasso Core, Box 1869, Auckland. ' DONNA YUZWALK ANDREW JOHNSTONE ; Morrinsville Tonight t Recorded at Tandy's in Hamilton, this ■ four song EP by Andrew Johnstone could * be worse. I mean, Morrinsville Tonight? Actually, it's fairly respectable and at least s worth a listen if you're into, say, early ’ Midnight Oil. Essentially pub-rock, it ‘ begins with 'Stumble', a shambling pop

song with some nice lead and backing , vocals. 'Carried Away' is bland, always a problem for pub rock sort of stuff. But ; things look a lot better with the faintly Lloyd Cole-ish 'Vacancy At The Love Hotel' — a cool sleaze title for a song. Remember the Hoodoo Gurus? Well, this is a bit like that but not quite as rugged. Morrinsville Tonight is boogie down at a ; Morrinsville party stuff. Anyone who can make Morrinsville sound like a wild hot , place to be (... 'maybe we con ride those hills like they were waves to some secret J place' woo! yeah!...) must have something going for them. Good, but I '' ' don't expect this ER to send you into a : musical frenzy, OK? SHIREELOVE THE BLUE ROOM (Self-titled) Um... incredibly interesting production. Occasionally it is difficult to distinguish between tape hiss and 'real' instruments. Laidback hippy music with lots of'hindus' and 'incense', even the odd sitar type effect or two. Do I detect a slight Velvet Underground or Syd Barrett influence? At their most dippy, that is. 30 BPM is when it moves uptempo. If someone stuck this band in Airforce ' studios the resulting album would probably be a masterpiece — if it was 1973. 'Hug' in particular has to be heard to be believed. SHIREELOVE

MERLENE CHAMBERS I'm Your Backdoor Girl 'Back Door Girl' (the song) is one . fair-suck-of-the-sav spitball of righteousness, solid enough evidence of the old axiom about how if you want shit done right, you do if your own self... Merlene does everything here, & does it ■ great — great voals, great gtr, great bass,' : r great, especially great drumming, & did I : already say great vocals? No I didn’t, I said great VOALS" but that's just cos I : can't type too good. Like Lou Reed once said, or actually I guess it was W.B. Yeats, anyway he said "The best lack all conviction & the Wbrst are filled with > passionate intensity", it was from a review ? he writ about that band The Worst, - >. anyway what he was talkin bout there I was rock & roll, Rock & fuggen Roll, bub, & I what this is, is, ditto, the way how only 1 gurls still know how to play it. & talking of which, actually one o' the other tracks on i here consists of some kind of curious . \ ■ variations on Celia Pavlovas 'Cosmic Love . | Vibration'which benefits from drum-machine precision instead of the scattered Bailings that attempted to pass off as "drumming" on the original, & a bunch of dumb changes that undermine any intended resemblance to same, the : whole serving as launching-pad for some dweedly John Segovia impersonations. Well, whatever turns you on I guess! It's a I free country!

DUANE ZARAKOV