I got an album I’ve been meaning to grab for awhile a few weeks ago by a band called Left Lane Cruiser, from Fort Wayne, Indiana. I don’t usually look at All Music Guide until well after I’ve bought something because I invariably notice how many stars they give it first, and I don’t like that. For the most part, it seems like everything I get maxes out at three stars anyway, but I don’t like to read those kind of reviews that sort of rate things and then wonder if I’m missing some point. I’d rather decide I love something, and then read the reviews that prove to me that reviewers are missing the point, not me! Anyway, I had enjoyed my purchase (they recorded this at Suma, in Painesville, OH, not too far from here) and decided to see if it got all the way to three stars. It actually did much better, so I read the review. The review was going along well until I read this sentence:
Lo-fi is a totally inadequate term to describe their sound, a sizzling mix of Beck’s pusillanimous drums, claps, percussion, and hoots and hollers and Freddie J’s blistering guitar and husky vocals.
OK. I have to look up pusillanimous. It must mean pure awesomeosity or supreme bam-a-lam or something good, right? Wrong! At least for a drummer in a two-man band I think it’s wrong. The first definition is:
1. lacking courage or resolution; cowardly; faint-hearted; timid.
The second is even worse. I don’t think I like pusillanimous drums. In fact, I bet that’s why I think so much music is sucky. The drums are too pusillanimous. So I’ll ask youse guys. Is this pusillanimous drumming? Does Jo-Ann Greene need a new dictionary? Was Frank Zappa right when he said, “Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read?”
Left Lane Cruiser, “Mr. Johnson”
It sounds to me like the writer didn’t know what pusillanimous means and was going for a cross between pummeling and pugilistic.
I think the writer thought it was a positive reinforcement of the word “pulse,” like it magmanimous or bodacious. The drums are in no way cowardly.
Has Jo-Ann Greene misused “pickaninny” in any of her other reviews?
I believe there was a famous phrase Spiro Agnew used to characterize anti-war folks, “pusillanimous pussy footers”. Too bad he got shitcanned before Nixon and couldn’t ascend to the Presidency with his Thesaurus.
Innes worked pusillanimous into Another Day, one of the Rutles’ songs: “You’re so pusillanimous, oooh yeah!” So the word does have a rich rock history.
I can’t say I was very impressed with this stuff. My reaction to the live clip was that I could teach anyone here to play slide guitar exactly like that within five minutes. It seemed a bit Kid Rockish to me.
The studio cuts were better, though I find it hard to believe they were recorded at Suma, the site of so many of my beloved Pere Ubu albums. Admittedly I’m listening on a half-inch laptop speaker, but the drusm on that first track sound like they were recorded on a boombox.
I, too, thought of Pere Ubu when I saw that the band recorded at Suma. How I love the sound that father and son got for the first few Ubu albums!
Even though this band isn’t exactly my cuppa ‘o meat, it was certainly better than that Kid Rock song swiping Sweet Home Alabama that I hadda listen to at lunch today. The drums didn’t sound pusillanimous to me.
On a somewhat related note, this band got me thinking of the White Stripes which led me to another 2-person band that I liked in the late ’80s, Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper. To me, there seemed to be the same type of dynamic between Jack ‘n Meg & Mojo ‘n Skid; i.e., the low-key quiet drummer supporting the rather “touched” front man. I also thought about how Mojo’s career kinda of went south after parting w/Skid & how Jack’s stuff w/the Raconteurs doesn’t move me as much as the White Stripes.
Diskojoe, I’d never thought of Mojo & Skid as proto-2-man-garage rockers before, but that makes a lot of sense. Good point, too, about the value of the straight man (or woman) in these acts.
I’ve seen both Mojo & Skid and The White Stripes live & seemed to me that aside from one song (Skid did a version of the Eve of Destruction at the Paradise, Boston gig I went to in 1989), both Skid & Meg were silent presences while their respective front men were doing their thing.
Speaking of proto-2-man garage rockers, in light of the White Stripes, as well as the other 2-people bands that have cropped up recently, I often wondered what Sterling Morrison & Mo Tucker would have sounded like if they somehow stuck together after the VU fell apart. I don’t know if they would be as good as the VU, but they would have sounded interesting.
BigSteve, I like your initial thought. I’m thinking she must have meant pummelistic and all drummers should be pummelsistic in my book. Hell, if you get a stick to hit things with, then hit them hard. I can certainly understand people not liking this, it’s sort of a one trick pony, but it’s a good trick and I really like that kind of hellacious racket. They’re one of those bands someone told me I’d like and I never heard anything until I bought it. I’m getting much better returns on my cash than the My Morning Jacket cd I bought awhile back.
I don’t get the Kid Rock and Sweet Home Motor City stuff, though. I think Left Lane Cruiser is pretty far from that, other than they’re from the midwest. I think there’s a certain sound that I can always relate to being from the midwest, and Kid Rock just steals that part of his sound from people that are more talented than he is. I don’t think Left Lane Crusier is planning on getting on the cover of Guitar Player, but there’s certainly a long line of guys playing that style of guitar.
But thanks for agreeing with me that it’s definitely not cowardly drumming.