LaRM day 18 (Ashtray Boy-A Small Good Thing)

Very brief today because of a company meeting going on all afternoon, so only time for a couple a rekkids, starting with Ashtray Boy's The Honeymoon Suite (1992). This is a great album, a kind of super lo-fi ragged pop, a la Beat Happening, but even more charmingly done. Off-beat tales of Shirley Maclaine's spiritual awakening, bakers finding love, and truckers on honeymoon, set to a spare, ramshackle indie soundtrack makes for a kind of cheerfully idiosyncratic Australian interpretation of Raymond Carver as pop music. It's over in half an hour and leaves me smiling every time. PS, it's worth mentioning that on a couple of songs the backing vocals are provided by a pre-fame and certainly pre-shit Liz Phair.

Then it's Slim Westerns (1994) and Slim Westerns Vol. II (2002) by A Small Good Thing (what a coincidence, Raymond Carver again - I assume A Small Good Thing are named after his short story). Should this come under A or S? Ah well, it's a moot point now because I'm doing it under A. I don't know anything about this outfit and only bought these records because I was buying everything that Leaf released, for reasons that now completely elude me. Anyway, it's worth discussing these two together because they're basically versions of almost exactly the same thing (Vol. II is perhaps a bit more obviously ambient oriented). If it's spooked-out Morricone rip-offs you're after, these will do the trick and no messing (funny one that "Morricone-esque" description because, of the 400-odd soundtracks Ennio has written, only a handful are for Westerns and sound remotely "Morricone-esque"). They're good records, all dust and flies, and incredibly atmospheric, but you really need to be in the mood for this stuff. The conceit is carried through to its fullest, with a "slim Western" being included as part of the package but to be honest who needs to read a badly written story about a cowboy called Gerry Melody? That's incidental to the music which is suitably arid and occasionally psyched-out to give it that added desert peyote trip feel, but the sign of the difficulty with this kind of record is that I can't help but feel that they must be English....

And that's it, sees you tomoz.