JUST
THE BLUES SPED UP - Sneeze (Half a Cow)I must first of all say that I am a musician and so my opinions are biased to the art and the artiste. I don't care about the career trajectory or the target audience. Also, I
wouldn't
be writing this if I didn't really think it was fuckin A cool and sweet. Sneeze
are too easy. Sneeze are a collective of lifers in the music scene. They have all come from other places to arrive at this point. They have shared some moments together in the past but, like say, the band that assembled to record "kind of blue with Miles Davis, they are together for a moment and we can dig them while they hold all their ambitions in check together. For a while.
From what I've been told, it’s their second effort. I will wait to hear the first in time. Right now, I am enjoying this. From my ignorant viewpoint I can say that they have a lot of talent in the writing and performing of music, they have listened (studied) a lot of music , they have played and experimented with a lot of music and they haven't forgotten to live a lot outside of the clubrooms as well. They also have tons of enthusiasm and energy. It’s impossibly rare to get this whole combination together. Almost never in fact.
As I said I'm embarrassed to say that I've missed much of their collective and individual efforts up to this point. I only got to hear "the hits". I don't mean to be insulting to say that nothing they've ever done has resonated and swung so hard with me. Lets just continue from here and say that it must be my fault.
Twenty tracks. But you'd never notice. It whizzes by your ears like a new, fast cricket ball . Lots of playing around with feels and grooves and types of songs but it all works. Several times, they have songs going they enjoy playing so much that they then extrapolate these into extended forms. Free-playing codas that follow on and become events by themselves.
The singing is rich and heartfelt and the lyrics are full of life. A personal favourite in the faultless timing and delivery would have to be "(when we were kids we played) dress ups" which has all the pathos and knowing self destructive slyness that I've only ever heard in the late 60's country records by Jerry Lee Lewis. (Yeah, it’s that good).
The arrangements are spectacularly vibrant and febrile and self-conscious all at once. They do dumb things and then all pile in and heap more stupid crap in just for a stir. I would never call it a retro record as its music made from a real collective cosmology that lives now. They mean it. It’s made by people who have a deep and abiding interest in rock music. If you need references I would point you towards the Bedbugs who appeared in the TV show “F Troop” and the likewise hip and cool Sacred Cows from “Get Smart”. They have obsessed over a lot of sounds and they have done a lot of playing.
In their own adventures in the past, they've done enough to test anybody’s illusions in regard to the limitations of the showbiz world, yet they've broken though and come back to the surface to offer up this spectacular bag of rare gems. (And it’s funny).
– Dave Graney
