The dream syndicate2/1/2024 ![]() Proceeding from Neil Young’s Crazy Horse period, songs like “Forest for the Trees,” “Now I Ride Alone,” “Slide Away” and “50 in a 25 Zone” (also released on a 12-inch with a bare-bones remix and three added tracks, including a maudlin version of “The Lonely Bull”) hum with enough coarse energy and stylistic insouciance to cover their compositional deficiencies. Cutler (ex-45 Grave) replaced Precoda, a revitalized Dream Syndicate released Out of the Grey, nine rugged rock-cowboy songs characterized by Wynn’s worn but hopeful vocals and Cutler’s obsessive distorto-guitar madness. (The two records were later paired on a domestic CD.)Īfter guitarist/producer Paul B. Nine-and-a-half minutes of that song also appear on This Is Not the New Dream Syndicate Album…Live!, a dismal document recorded live in Chicago during the 1984 tour that followed Medicine Show. Early fans cried sell-out, but with eight- minute jam/raps like “John Coltrane Stereo Blues” included, that accusation doesn’t hold much water. Also, guitarist Karl Precoda cuts back on the feedback and the entire album has more of a traditional rock’n’roll feel. Wynn’s songs remain driven and obsessive, but he seems more inclined to ape Mick Jagger than Lou Reed this time. Original bassist Kendra Smith left the band signed to A&M and recorded a second album, produced by Sandy Pearlman. (The UK-only Tell Me When It’s Over EP adds three live cuts to the title track, drawn from the album.) With driving, feedback- drenched guitars and stream-of-consciousness lyrical spume, the record appealed to sensitive English-major college radio programmers too young to shoot up to the Velvets the first time around. Following the release of a four-song demo on Wynn’s Down There label, the quartet made its proper debut on The Days of Wine and Roses, rawly produced by Chris D. ![]() While many of the movement’s bands plumbed the Byrds/Buffalo Springfield or Pink Floyd archives for inspiration, Dream Syndicate’s weird, obsessive lyrics, relentless noise maelstroms - mixed with eerie/pretty otherworldly dirges and ballads - and singer Steve Wynn’s nasal rasping and ranting recalled the Velvet Underground, though (of course) they steadfastly denied that to be their intent. ![]() Those desperate for Tom Verlaine's next one might conceivably settle for Sandy Pearlman's ampliclarification of Karl Precoda's guitar, but now that Steve Wynn is flexing his literary imagination we know where the interpersonal vignettes on the debut came from: when he grows up, Steve wants to write new journalism about adolescent anomie for California magazine.Dream Syndicate was one of the first bands from Los Angeles’ psychedelic revival (misleadingly dubbed the paisley underground) to reach a national audience. Very subtle-the sharper you listen the duller it sounds. But Steve Wynn's take on the usual world-weary table topics is gratifying matter-of-fact and no more, and music like this-music where the fun is in the no-fun-feels incomplete when it stops there. Punctuated as well as buoyed by drummer Dennis Duck, Karl Precoda shapes a guitar master's trick bag of basic chords and ungodly electric accidents into drones that won't quit, so abrasively tuneful I get off on this album strictly as a groove-the way I get off on perfectly mindless funk like, say, the Gap Band singles. Denying the Velvets ever cross his mind is a nice conceited Loulike touch, though. Karl Precoda has the feedback down, and Dennis Duck simulates Mo's style while intensifying her groove and doubling her drive, but Steve Wynn needs to work on his Lou-he projects too much.
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