the best 90's album you've never heard of

Shoegazer - Intoxicated Birthday Lies, 1998, Todo O Nada Records

You thought I was going to say Hickey, huh? Nope. Enough people know and love Hickey to pull them out of the obscure category, though they'll never be mistaken for, oh, I don't know, Voodoo Glow Skulls. This album? I'd be shocked if anyone reading this has heard it.

This band is called Shoegazer. They were an L.A. band who put out a pretty good album called Two Brown Bears Boxing in the mid-90's. There was a song on that called "Belong" that I dug a whole lot and put them on my radar. Saw them play with the Nobodys at a skate park in Fresno. I was a fan. But I never expected something like their next album, "Intoxicated Birthday Lies". Completely blew me away.

If you've seen this album at all, it was likely in the dollar bin of your local record store. Which is a damn shame, because this album is totally rad.

What do Shoegazer play? Well, not shoegaze if you're wondering. They play a bit of everything. One second it's pop-punk ("Elemenopee", the next it's a hardcore, Positive State-ish ditty ("Power Converter") , mix in some math-y breakdowns ("Betty Crocker"), sometimes all in the same song, and you're getting close. In other words, it's punk, but not easily classifiable into a sub-genre. If you must know, "Moted" is my favorite song on here, though I love each and every song on the album.

I never heard anything about them afterwords. I've tried off and on to figure out whatever happened to them, but putting "shoegazer" in the google doesn't help much. And this is one case where the tried and true method of adding "band" doesn't work either. So if by chance someone could fill in the details, I'm all ears.

If you download this, chances are you're going to be underwhelmed. The title of this post sets the bar pretty high. But got dam I love this record.

Weird fact: One of the other "best albums that no one has ever heard," F96 by Wingnut Supreme, was released on the same label.

Run, Marty, Run.