All that year end stuff is fun. Well, maybe it is, sometimes. All those interminable lists. Single transferable votes to decide who a bunch of bloggers think was the album of whenever, or what’s predicted to be the hyped thing in the next artificially devised calendar period. Even after the end of time if you fell for some 12,000 year old Mayan practical joke. Thank fuck it’s all over and done with until the next time. And that it gave me a week or two to dig through and do some listening, find the good stuff hiding in plain sight just round the back of the Christmas tree. What I prosaically did was to empty my iPod, start again from scratch with music I’d been trying to get round to. And what came along next was one of those happy moments when I was literally stopped in my tracks by a song on Prissy Clerks‘ debut album ‘Bruise Or Be Bruised’ which was out last month. The track was ‘Losing Time’. The way that the lo-fi opening guitar line was chased down the hole by an accordion being played in a church hall, and then by Clara Salyer’s voice, was at one and the same time one hundred years familiar and yet dead fresh. It made me so excited I had to go and write on my Facebook page, so there!
Happily that was just the flare to draw me into an album, the rest of which was just as good to eat as that first track. It turns out they’re out of Minneapolis, a city that’s provided a fair few of my listening favourites over the last couple of years. Every bit of literature about this band makes a Sebadoh comparison. I’d say think instead 90’s Boston scene – say the Muses, with moments of Los Camps (OK, so I’m referencing my most dearly held bands here), all of which is then played garage style, and the whole lot sung under with a breathy insouciance by Clara. I was curious enough to find a video, and they look like slackers, which is all to the good. You can stream the whole album if you click around the link too. Enjoy. Happy New Year.
