‘Smoking at Gas Stations’ is a seven song CD from a band called the CRACK BABIES. Live, they probably sound a bit like the Jesus and Mary Chain and Velvet Underground. I say ‘probably’ because – at the risk of sounding like somebody’s dad – this CD is almost un-listenable; I can make neither head nor tail of it. Now of course, not everyone can afford to go into a studio and make a professional sounding demo; that’s fine, and nobody is really interested in grading a record’s production or use of jazzy effects anyway. Clichéd it may be, but it’s the songs that matter. Unfortunately Smoking at Gas Stations sounds like it was recorded through an old pair of in-the-ear headphones by the sort of people who used to laugh at school whilst scraping their fingers down the blackboard.
I’m all for using feedback to add an extra edge to music, but not at the expense of everything else. A blanket of white noise can also easily be deemed a convenient way to hide a lack of actual musical talent; so you can’t help but be suspicious if it happens to be the absolute focal point of a band’s songs.
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On ‘Shine’ and ‘Pretty’ you can faintly hear someone singing and can just about make out some semblance of a tune but there’s not much else to grab your attention. Maybe the Crack Babies don’t care about polished sound recording – I guess that’s kind of admirable in today’s world of superstar producers and reconditioned vintage mixing desks. Maybe some people will love this. Maybe the Crack Babies are brilliant live. Who knows.
Just don’t listen to this on headphones unless you want your brain to explode.
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