There's a band by that name, too. I'd imagine they got the name from the drink. They seem to be based in
Rhode Island but the principles (
Paul Chastain,
bass and singing,
Ric Menck,
drums and singing) are from the
Midwest. Somewhere. Somewhere in the
Midwest.
I'd call them "
psychedelic power pop" if I were going to
out myself as a
record collector geek, but I won't, so you didn't hear that.
Velvet Crush made an
Ep or two in the early
nineties, and then they got serious. They've had a varying population of
guitarists; on their last
album (
Free Expression,
1999), the above two played
guitar themselves, along with some random
passersby and the evil
Matthew Sweet, who produced the thing with them.
Chastain and
Menck write all the songs anyway so it's not that big of a deal that the
guitarists come and go.
Matthew Sweet, evil though he may be, has championed the lads for years and deserves credit for it.
Teenage Symphonies to God (
1994) is one of those very rare
records that are good enough to justify such a cool name; think of the first time you heard "
Archangel Thunderbird" by
Amon Duul II: There was fear, was there not? Fear that no song could live up to that name -- and then it
did, by golly, and all was joy! Well, this is one of those. The immortal
Mitch Easter produced it, and it's just a gosh-darn nifty
record. Word has it that
Mitch Easter toured with them behind it, which is pretty fantastic because I saw them on that tour (opening for
Mazzy Star,
Hope walked off stage, blah blah blah) and there was an extra
guitarist up there, and that must've been
Mitch: So now I can die happy: I saw
Mitch plain. They rocked, by the way.
Symphonies is
psychedelic and
polychromatic and loud and quiet and wonderful, and there's
pedal steel too. They even covered a
Gene Clark song, "
Why Not Your Baby", and did
a bang-up job on it. Around that time, they covered
Gram Parsons' "
One Hundred Years From Now" (released as a
B side), also a treat, but they got snubbed on the recent
Parsons tribute album, where
Wilco grabbed that one (and did it justice, too). They haven't been that good since then. Neither has anybody else.
Heavy Changes (
1998) and
Free Expression (
1999) haven't grown on me yet. I doubt that
Heavy Changes will; it's a very monochromatic record, the kind bands are apt to make after birthing an extravaganza like
Symphonies.
Free Expression is new yet, and we'll see. I had
Symphonies for about a year before I realized that it was
the second coming of Christ.
Some years ago,
Ric Menck made a grinning, naive
solo album entitled
The Ballad of Ric Menck. He has an annoying, sing-songy voice, but about half the songs are just gloriously
groovy enough for it to be
a good thing. Wonderful innocent sunshiny retro
guitar pop.