ZOLOTO
( Vibro-phonics DL1026 CD LP 2004) |
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Skooshny, whose name is Russian for "boring",
started out in Los Angeles in the early '70s and played together for six
years without performing live. There's no flash or pretension in anything
they do. Their website and press releases are simple and down to earth.
So here's what you know about Skooshny so far: they are boring and simple.
However, "boring" and "simple" have nothing to do
with their music. Zoloto, a nominal "best of" compilation of
the group's wistful psych-pop, offers ample opportunities to dig into
their rich, multilayered work. Opener "Even My Eyes" begins
with swirls of layered instrumentation, formulating a vivid, surreal texture.
Mark Breyer's vocals hint at despair, longing and unhappiness -- his natural
tone shifts easily from smooth to gruff. "Even My Eyes" is the
strongest track; Bruce Wagner's impressive guitar work rolls alongside
David Winogrond's larger-than-life drumming and Breyer's silky vocals.
"Beautiful Bruise", one of the album's four new tracks, is a
stepladder of melody; it scatters up and down scales, complete with organ
and guitar solos. The overlapping layers create an ethereal texture reminiscent
of The Byrds' spacy psychedelia -- stirring stuff.
Skooshny may have missed out on major attention -- it's easy when your
name means "boring" -- but Zoloto could be their long-awaited
breakthrough. After thirty-odd years, don't they deserve it?
- Ryan Humm, Splendid
Usually the kids plunking away on their guitars in their makeshift garage
studio are about as good as their meager entourage (composed mainly of
girlfriends) would suggest, and even worse when the same kids have grown
to middle age while their aesthetic has ossified where they left it in
the Pleistocene era, along with their hairlines. Skooshny's latest release
looks for all the world to be one of those "just-for-the-fun-of-it"
releases by the same garage-dwelling, middle-aged hacks with nothing better
to do than take the ol' Rickenbacker for a spin around their suburban
cul-de-sac.
Formed in L.A. in 1971 and self-described as "boring" (supposedly
this is "skooshny" translated from Russian), the band never
took off for the simple reason that none of the band members had a car,
and by the end of the decade they disbanded. Their languid, paisley pop
tunes were re-discovered in the dank collectors' bins of psychedelia's
English motherland by Bill Forsyth of Minus Zero Records, who reissued
Skooshny's rare recordings in the early '90s. Having apparently decided
to pick up their career where they left off, though still sans voiture,
their newest album Zoloto (translation: "Gold") is a retrospective
of their work plus four new songs ("Beautiful Bruise", "I
See You Now", "Angel With a Devil's Heart", "You Paint
My World"). With an album cover featuring a satiric title, posed
band photo, and vaguely anachronistic Cold War overtones, the album screams
bourgeois self-indulgence; but, what it whispers below the garish veneer
is a brilliant cacophony of genre-defiant pop that broods over California
traffic-induced white noise and utopian dreams of folk pop psychedelic
transcendence. Slipping past the album's chintzy cardboard sleeve, the
listener finds apt comparisons with the Byrds, post-hallucinogenic Monkees,
modern sincere mock rockers Ween. and awkward shoe-gazers the world over.
Most retrospective albums show some sort of aesthetic progress over time;
rather Zoloto presents Skooshny's career as more or less one cohesive
musical concept rooted in bright tongue-in-cheek pop in a rainbow of psychedelic
colors from sunny yellow ballads to blue-tinged melancholy tunes and occasionally
red hot rock. Yet, this is no nostalgic romp through a mawkish field of
daisies and love beads. Skooshny is peering at us through the haze of
smog that has since descended upon the ruins of Haight-Asbury. The song
"Beautiful Bruise" recalls the pensive guitar strumming and
jangly keyboards of hippie-era greats the Byrds, yet the melancholy deadpan
vocals transform the colors of peace and love into the "big, bad,
bright, beautiful bruise" that has since taken its place. Skooshny
are particularly adept at moving through these kinds of juxtapositions,
and slogging through the complexities of idealized imagery and monotonous,
lumbering decay.
One of the finer tracks on the album is "I See You Now", a
haunting and poignant ballad that harnesses pulsing guitars and a gut
wrenching chorus that churns with musical complexity, translating straight
pop form into a mixture of meter changes and layers of contrasting timbres.
On the incendiary track "It Hides More Than It Tells", Skooshny's
glum shoe-gazing pose is transformed into a brooding tension that explodes
into a tight garage rocker, whose youthful roughshod energy bleeds through
raucous percussion and fuzz guitars in a gratifying flurry of pop rock
brilliance. As the band explores this tension further on songs that range
from "No Life Story" and its urban cowboy spaghetti western
feel to mournful folk ballad "Dessert for Two", Skooshny stakes
its territory on that squeamish tickly spot somewhere between the intuitive
ever loving heart and the guilty gluttonous pleasures in the bowels of
the human beast.
Yet with all the layers of irony, the lyric double takes, and the bitter
sweet harmonies, Skooshny never confesses their true intensions. Do they
rock, or do they mock rock? At times their lyric opacity is a welcome
vacation from contemporary prurient pop that loves to revel in lyric titillation,
as lyrics like "Yellows and greens / My teeth through your jeans"
dress their sensual reverie in tasteful undergarments. However, sometimes
this opacity is simply unintelligible and mildly ridiculous, as on the
chronically mediocre "Clickin' My Fingers", where one lyric
quips "Sterno in a cup / Drink up" and the redundant "Chicken
Little was right / The sky is falling". While at times the album
seems to fall into a cycle of self-quotation that is made all the worse
considering the album's span includes what Skooshny considers their retrospective
best, more often their apparent honesty and insistent aversion to pretense
make it nearly impossible to conclude they have anything but the best
and most mind-boggling intensions. Like Ween after them, and now before
them, Skooshny's music dwells in the twilight zone of popular culture
between authenticity and parody that exasperates some and thrills others.
Whether Skooshny's latest release is zoloto or merely skooshny, this is
a band that is worth a listen.
- Katie Zerwas, PopMatters
Imagine - a Los Angeles band that has been a semi-ongoing concern since
the mid-1970s obtains cult status in Europe, remains all but unsniffed
Stateside and then releases a gigantic 20-track retrospective, replete
with old, new and previously unreleased tracks. Well, my friends, meet
Skooshny.
Plying a sparkling brew of folk-tinged, twangy pop rock that conjures
up the pristine conceits of The Kinks and The Byrds (albeit occasionally
brushed with washes that include wild violins) while dancing on the edges
of Pink Floyd, R.E.M., and even, dare it be said, Lords Of The New Church,
this trio may have released three albums on a budget that make a shoestring
look grand, but Skooshny certainly don't sound like it.
While the band's earlier songs (late-1970s), "Crossing Double Lines,"
"It Hides More Than It Tells" and "Ceiling To The Lies,"
certainly sound more of their era than later efforts, their break between
old and newer doesn't stand out. Newer songs such as "Even My Eyes"
evoke a delightful alt-guitar fuzz, while others ("Clickin' My Fingers")
fall somewhere between the two. Add the Michael Penn-produced "Dessert
For Two" and "Masking The Moon," and the resulting Zoloto
is a startling sonic array.
Although Skooshny may well have been lost in the leviathan grind of contemporary
music, they remain pure and untouched - an earnest sidestep into pop rock.
- Amy Hanson, Goldmine
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WATER
( MZR - 4 CD LP 2000) |
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The story of Skooshny should be a familiar one to most of you. The LA
band put out two wonderful singles in the late 70's that went unnoticed
at the time. Bill Forsyth of Minus Zero picked up on these gems and finally
tracked down the band only to find they had an album's worth of recordings
just gathering dust, including some that featured none other than Michael
Penn guesting on chamberlin and backing vocals. Bill decided to release
this material to much critical acclaim and this spurred on the band to
reform and start recording new material. The result was Even My Eyes
an album even better than what had gone before.
Now comes Water, the latest outing by this much loved combo. Mark
Breyer has a soft and individual voice that along with his melodic and
baroque song writing skills are the trademarks that make Skooshny so special.
Operating on a shoestring the band are still capable of their own brand
of magic even after all these years. Flawed opens the album in
perfect 60's tinged pop style and could easily have come straight off
a Green Pajama's platter. The Water Song is enchanting with it's
twisting multi-layered structure and beautiful playing throughout, capturing
the band at its very best. Skooshny are still one special band!
-Mick Dillingham, Bucketfull of Brains
Water, Skooshny's third full-length offering, is yet another in a long
line of excellent discs from a bumper crop of indie pop albums that were
released in 2000. The power pop trio (augmented by studio guest musicians)
penned nine of the ten songs on the disc, with the “borrowed”
tune a terrific cover of Gene Clark's “For Me Again” (from the
Byrds' Preflyte album). The opening song, “Flawed”, introduces
the listener to the guitar-oriented, layered pop songs that follow. “Sad
Summer Spring” stands out as a Byrds-inspired ballad and “Lullabye”
has an echo chamber/psych-pop sound that is reminiscent of Rich Hopkins
& The Luminaros' body of work. In fact, lead vocalist Mark Breyer's
voice sounds a little like Hopkins. “Desert Rain” could pass
for an Arthur Lee/Love ballad, and the fusion of 80's power pop with 90's
guitar crunch on “Kate's Green Phone” will evoke pleasant memories
of the Amboy Dukes. We may not hear from Skooshny as often as we like,
but when we do it merits a serious listening.
- Eric Sorenson, Amplifier
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EVEN MY EYES
( MZR - 3 CD LP 1996) |
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Co-produced by Beach Boys engineer Jeff Peters, this album contains all
four tracks from 1992's celebrated Holy Land EP.
Skooshny are the original slackers; They've managed only an EP and a single
since 1975, collected with some earlier demos on a Minus Zero CD in 1991.
Despite the underproduction, the songwriting talents of Mark Breyer and
Bruce Wagner nevertheless shone bright on that record. Such was the reaction
they were encouraged to reform and record Holy Land, included here with
their first full album.
Thankfully, this one is a well-produced mature affair showcasing a band
who have discovered a rich and potent sound all their own. Take the harmonies
of Big Star, the wistful quirkiness of R.E.M. circa Life's Rich Pageant,
Stray Gator -styled Neil Youngian passion, the sinewy guitar thrash of
Blondie and smear it all over 14 tracks, and the result is that rarest
of breeds, an album that sounds totally self-contained and complete. It's
also an album of plaintive paeans to love gone wrong, loves that should
have been and loves that might have been. Pain, heartache and loss never
sounded so gorgeous.
- Cliff Jones, MOJO.
Californian trio Skooshny formed in the mid-1970s and recorded two singles
before disbanding in 1979, too late for psychedelic guitar-pop's first
wave and too soon for REM's 1980's revival. A cache of unreleased material
comprised 1991's eponymous Skooshny compilation LP, and a smattering of
rave reviews provoked a reunion and the recording of Even My Eyes.
The title track opens up the record with a gorgeous lead part - echoing
the Byrds' Eight Miles High - and some insistent Television-style rhythm
guitar work, the perfect 1960's/1970's fusion and an irresistible era-defying
classic.
...Even My Eyes, a labour of love for the tiny Minus Zero label, deserves
a wider audience than that of the record collector fanboys for whom Skooshny's
convoluted history alone is just too romantic to resist.
- Stewart Lee, Sunday Times
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SKOOSHNY
(MZR
-1 CD LP 1991) |
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This brilliant 17 track compilation brings to an expectant public the
very best of the, until now, mostly unreleased output of this Los Angeles
based outfit built around the individual songwriting talents of one Mark
Breyer. The story of Skooshny is not one of your standard rock & roll
flash. Formed initially in 1971 by Breyer and drummer Winogrond, they
remained very much a bedroom band and it wasn't until 1975, with the addition
of guitarist Bruce Wagner, that the band started recording in earnest
but sporadic style in various, low-budget studios. They never did get
as far as playing live, but they did release a four song EP and a single
before splitting in 1981 - ironically, just as the type of sixties-styled
melodic guitar music that they played started to come back into vogue.
Skooshny were in their time a fish out of water; five years before or
five years later they would have been acclaimed for their quality and
the depth of the music they created, a tiny legacy which wasn't to be
appreciated until the more appropriate musical climate of the REM & Rain
Parade-ish 1980s. Enter Bill Forsyth of rock record emporium Minus Zero
Records, who contacted the ex-members with a view to obtaining any spare
copies of the, by now, scarce vinyl for resale to his more knowing customers.
A small wealth of unreleased material came to light and with it, the idea
of this release, consisting of the six previously available songs plus
the remainder of their recorded excursions into the studios of the late
70s. Proof, as with our own Mr Frond and the maverick musical archivist
R. Stevie Moore, that a huge recording budget and multi-tracked digitalized
technology are not essential to producing music of depth and quality.
"Fever Dreams" is very melodically and methodically sixties in feel,
beautifully played and imaginatively recorded. "The Mood In Me" resonates
charm and is underpinned with a lovely harpsichord sound - lacking the
instrument and means of getting one, the band played it on a 12-string
and speeded up the results to achieve the desired effect. Once again,
the leanness of their budget forcing them to experiment and apply intelligence
to the venture. "Crossing Double Lines" is coated in the fluid guitar
playing of Bruce Wagner and harmony vocals of a Left Banke-ish hue, while
"You Bring Me Magic" is the type of superb melody that the Bevis comes
up with when in his Byrds mode. "The Ceiling To The Lies" is a real classic,
quite overwhelming and yet understated at the same time with again the
12-string foundation built on high by Wagner's tasty guitar leads. Nearly
all of the 17 tracks are of comparable quality. Let's just hope that the
response to this marvellous collection is as it should be and, as mentioned
in the sleeve notes, acts as a catalyst to a Skooshny reformation and
a new album. In the meantime an immediate investigation into the treasure
trove that Skooshny left behind last time is highly recommended.
- Mick Dillingham, Ptolemaic Terrascope
This debut release from the collector's shop Minus Zero is suitably obscure
- and enticing. Taped between 1975 and 1981, it documents the joint recording
career of LA inhabitants Mark Breyer, Bruce Wagner and David Winogrond,
who cut one single, one ep and a bunch of demos with the help of friends
like singer-songwriter Michael Penn (brother of Sean). Skooshny (Russian
for 'boring', so they say) was the successor to Brevity, Breyer and Winogrond's
early seventies band, who auditioned for Frank Zappa's Bizarre concern
and recorded "Cakewalk", included here amongst the later recordings. And
the music? We were quoted REM and American sixties bands like the Byrds
as comparisons: The REM similarity is immediately apparent, with Breyer's
vocals on the opening cut (from 1977!) recalling Stipe's patented murmur.
Otherwise, there's no obvious ancestor for this music, though it sounds
ultra-American, in the best possible way - full of interesting melodies
with unexpected sharp corners, vocals that range from the raw to the lushly
harmonised, with sparky guitar riffs. This isn't power-pop, or folk-rock
or new wave, or any simple categorisations like that: it's Skooshny music.
Is it a classic? Well I haven't lived long enough with it to find out
but it is certainly one of the most intriguing and enjoyable albums I've
heard in a long while.
-Record Collector
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