I could review this one without even popping it in the CD player, but I am going to anyway as it’s a bloody lovely album. Over on the right hand side there you can see my original review of this record (featuring one slightly disturbing reference to our long forgotten past) from the dim and distant days of 1998, I purchased the album from Subjugation distro possibly at random, just as I was getting to grips with what had been a dire previous 9 months. It had been a pretty emo time for me and it turned out that I was ready to latch on to music like this to get myself back on track. This album played a pivotal role in that, soundtracking a number of late evening and weekend afternoon walks that summer which helped me recover and eventually start on the road to becoming someone I was much more comfortable with being. EMO AS FUCK! Anyway, enough of my self obsessed rambling, let us revisit this record…
Beezewax blazed through this record with a fantastic sound, everything sounds slightly fuzzed, like a radio that is a tiny bit out of tune. For such a slack sound they certainly managed to rock out a lot on this album. The first track “The Snooze Is On” backs that up by utilising short wave whistling, and driving on by. It kicks straight into the rocking bliss of “On the Floor” which just hammers through gorgeously. I love how they were able to crank out this stuff at such speeds. The vocals are mixed low down, not entirely clear but they are there to pick out and guess at. Given that the band was from Norway, the music is heavily influenced by American indie (oh ok, college) rock, with moments that to me suggest Superchunk, the Promise Ring and even Christie Front Drive at times. I was to later learn that the band was influenced by stuff like the Posies which I still never really got round to checking out, but that’s by the by. There are so many good songs on here, and all of them sound like familiar friends that I haven’t checked in with for a while. Just picking up where we left off. There is a couple of bonus tracks on here that were not originally on the album, “Spring Break” could easily have slotted right in the middle of it, and the other is a disposable home recording of a cover.
On reflection, I don’t think Beezewax topped this one with their more power-poppy efforts that followed, and whilst it could be suggested that this album is kind of derivative, that’s not a problem for me. I still love listening to this, 12 years down the line. Thanks to Boss Tuneage for getting this re-pressed and giving people who missed it at the time a chance to hear it.