Limited Fanfare 2013 / Think Like A Key 2025
The end of the beginning for Miami Beach ensemble who would restore their stamina to usher in a new era and reissue their odds-and-sods album a dozen years down the line.
Crack
It was despair, rather than a certain illegal substance, that the title of these Floridians’ fourth album referred to – yet Roger Houdaille didn’t really see “Crack” as an album per se, because what he gathered back in 2013 amounted to a smattering of out-takes from the collective’s first three full-length releases and a few raw cuts. The band commander’s method echoed their disenchantment with the entire thing – five years of the group’s existence must have felt like wasted time, as either fame or fortune, let alone both, still seemed far from their grasp – so the players’ hopelessness resulted in the cassette-only appearance of the original ten tracks on offer, which didn’t help the music reach the audience. Fast-forward to the present, though, and the freshly remastered, augmented, and partially remixed, edition of the old tapes brings the stop-gap array of songs into staggering 3D, as reflected in the new cover artwork.
The record’s tightly packed with tunes and crackling with electricity, such acoustically driven numbers as jovial opener “Your Own Swing” or pseudo-despondent, from today’s perspective, closer “Done” are possessed of alluring sincerity, Houdaille vocals easily switching from silky to raspy, especially in the honeyed harmonies of the former’s refrains and forlorn delivery of the latter, and his guitars from light strum to heavy riffs to rope the listener in and never let go. There’s deceptive innocence in the finely detailed psychedelia of “Bibi Kan Werk It” – propelled by a bass ripple, unexpectedly skipping to calypso halfway into it, and given extra heft in the alternative version which sits among other bonus tracks – and sweet danger in “I’m A Fighter, Not A Lover” which, infectiously voiced by Michelle Grand Reinkopf, turns a couple of patinated perennials on their heads via its synth-pop-influenced arrangement. But while the rough-sounding “Page To” refracts melodic crunch of rock’s acid-soaked decade through the lens of indie sensibilities, “The Faces Demo Heads” rides a tangibly pulsing groove, and “Say What You Want” opts, as does the “Something Unreal / Lydia” single from 2012, for uninhibited sentiments that Roger and Michelle deliver in a blistering duet. What’s not to love?
Still, whereas the previously shelved “Have A Coffee On Us” and “Have In Mind” build from simple ditties to in-your-face, life-affirming anthems, pieces from the contemporary “Hot Pants” EP – including EX NORWEGIAN’s expert take on KALEIDOSCOPE’s “Holidaymaker” as a forecast of Houdaille’s future label issuing solo efforts from the English combo’s leader, Peter Daltrey, as well as the raga-tinged, and unhinged, “With Or Without You’re Mind” – expand the album’s scope to a widescreen wonder. Roger would begin to rediscover his creative mojo on 2014’s “Wasted Lines” – only that’s a whole different story.
****3/4
