Fat History Month – Fucking Despair LP (Sophomore Lounge)
Boston duo plays the greatest hits of early, moody post-rock up through its fruition, from wacky shit like Tweez up through A Minor Forest. I get that there is a market for this sort of thing from people who couldn’t be there, and truth be told I’ll probably attend a Bitch Magnet reunion show should one happen near me. It’s not too much fun to relive the self-deprecating music that accompanied my own depreciation period, but I can see why others would want to hold onto this sort of stuff. It extends the monologue of this stripe of Gen X indie rock without necessarily advancing it, or changing its tenor. One sheet proclaims the band’s influences include “great songs that sound shitty the first few times you hear them,” but they don’t necessarily sound great after years and years of the same thing. On the perplexing Sophomore Lounge label, which seems to release records that call back to the ‘90s and don’t hear much of a response. (http://sophomoreloungerecords.com)
(Doug Mosurock)
