Shannon & the Clams - I Wanna Go Home (2009)

Tracklist

01. Troublemaker
03. You Can Come Over
04. Surrounded by Ghosts
05. Cry Aye Aye Aye
06. Take It Back
07. Scuffle with the Clams
08. Blast Me to Bermuda
09. Cat Party
10. Waiting for You
11. When You're On
12. I Wanna Go Home

This is one of those bands that is almost certainly better live than in the studio -- in part because when they play live they probably don't sound as if they're trying simultaneously to channel the Ronettes and the Ramones through a half-broken cassette recorder. It's not that channeling the Ronettes and the Ramones simultaneously is a bad idea -- the Dollyrots have been doing that brilliantly for a decade now. What's a bad idea is mistaking ultra-lo-fi recording as the end rather than the means to an end. I Wanna Go Home opens with "Troublemaker," an incredibly trashy-sounding slab of 1960s garage punk/girl group fusion. Then comes "The Warlock in the Woods," which, unbelievably, sounds even trashier, as if it were recorded on a half-broken cassette recorder through a tin can. On "You Can Come Over" the rawness works better - Shannon Shaw's lyrics are primal and desperate, and the music reflects them perfectly; there's a similarly felicitous balance in evidence on "Blast Me to Bermuda," which sounds like the B-52's after a particularly hard night of drinking and brawling. Both "Waiting for You" and "Take It Back" would also have worked pretty well if it weren't for Shaw's painfully out-of-tune singing. This all adds up to an album that's interesting to listen to once, but not more than that.

DOWNLOAD ALBUM [flac]