Fresh Brood
Fresh Brood compilation 2012 reissue (ZB025)
Sandwiched between the band's two full-length albums are a pair of EP's, recorded at Olde West, the South of Market studio that served as the group's sonic incubator during their first five years.
Fresh Brood brought aboard the more rhythmically sinuous Eddie Sassin on drums, and shows the band making a conscious turn toward a poppier sound that was, perhaps perversely, antithetical to the local music scene at that time, but every bit in line with Dean and Lehmann's professed fealty to the smart songcraft of The dB's and New Zealand bands such as The Bats and The Chills. It found both songwriters in typically manic-depressive mode: Dean's “Zoya” is unabashedly joyous, if lyrically cryptic, while “The Rent Comes Due in Paradise” captures the band engaging in artfully cathartic meltdown; and Lehmann's songs run the gamut from outright disgust (“What Erica Knows”) to elation (“True Enough”).
Next up was Headache of the Gods, with recording engineer James Schaefer behind the drum kit. Schaefer's roommate, Lee Bloom made his debut with the band not on keyboards but by riding his motorcycle into the studio to provide live sound effects for “Chicks on Scooters,” Lehmann's send-up of the city's throngs of hipster commuters. Headache also includes Dean's professed ode to "unrequited like," the power-pop valentine "Elizabeth."
The band's finale was the four song EP, sad fearful playful excited (which chronologically follows The Naked & the Daft). Eschewing a rented practice space, the principals had been working on arrangements in Dean's apartment, above a doctor's office in the Mission district. With the addition of drummer James Coil – who only played with brushes, never sticks – one would think the band's sound would change significantly, and it did, but not in expected ways; rather than becoming lighter or jazzier, the guitars got dirtier, Doherty's melodic bass fuzzier, the vocals more urgent. To capture the reconstituted Fussbudgets line-up, Dean recorded them in his apartment on his four-track Fostex machine, with minimal overdubs. In lieu of a proper “live” album, this is the closest thing to experiencing the group in concert.
Fresh Brood brought aboard the more rhythmically sinuous Eddie Sassin on drums, and shows the band making a conscious turn toward a poppier sound that was, perhaps perversely, antithetical to the local music scene at that time, but every bit in line with Dean and Lehmann's professed fealty to the smart songcraft of The dB's and New Zealand bands such as The Bats and The Chills. It found both songwriters in typically manic-depressive mode: Dean's “Zoya” is unabashedly joyous, if lyrically cryptic, while “The Rent Comes Due in Paradise” captures the band engaging in artfully cathartic meltdown; and Lehmann's songs run the gamut from outright disgust (“What Erica Knows”) to elation (“True Enough”).
Next up was Headache of the Gods, with recording engineer James Schaefer behind the drum kit. Schaefer's roommate, Lee Bloom made his debut with the band not on keyboards but by riding his motorcycle into the studio to provide live sound effects for “Chicks on Scooters,” Lehmann's send-up of the city's throngs of hipster commuters. Headache also includes Dean's professed ode to "unrequited like," the power-pop valentine "Elizabeth."
The band's finale was the four song EP, sad fearful playful excited (which chronologically follows The Naked & the Daft). Eschewing a rented practice space, the principals had been working on arrangements in Dean's apartment, above a doctor's office in the Mission district. With the addition of drummer James Coil – who only played with brushes, never sticks – one would think the band's sound would change significantly, and it did, but not in expected ways; rather than becoming lighter or jazzier, the guitars got dirtier, Doherty's melodic bass fuzzier, the vocals more urgent. To capture the reconstituted Fussbudgets line-up, Dean recorded them in his apartment on his four-track Fostex machine, with minimal overdubs. In lieu of a proper “live” album, this is the closest thing to experiencing the group in concert.