Hey, remember your glum chum from Portland, Sam Coomes? You know, from back in your old college days, when he and (Sleater-Kinney) drummer Janet Weiss would crash on your floor after those shambly Quasi shows? Sure you do!
Well, break out your scummiest pocket tee and cloudiest beer and get ready to relive the glory days, cuz your old buddy is coming back around again (at least, musically), this time with the release of his first-ever solo album. Let’s do this.
The record, which Coomes himself carefully qualifies as “Suicide meets The Beach Boys” (er, but “not the sophisticated Pet Sounds Beach Boys, but more like Surfer Girl stuff”) is called Bugger Me, and it’s due August 19 on No Quarter Records. Accompanied only by his grimy, Tin Pan Alley-on-garbage-day-style organ and a “non-programmable,” mid-60s rhythm box (“not even really a drum machine”), he further classifies the album’s nine resultant jams as “entertainment music […] meant for those not served by more mainstream entertainment music.”
“Maybe one might want to take a break from Sheer Hellish Miasma & enjoy some simple tunes that maybe speak to the same sense of the absurd, that likewise reject commercialism & market-based aesthetics, and even now and again pay a little homage to the raw synthesizer noise we have grown to love & even crave,” he crows. “Maybe timeworn themes such as love & war still resonate in the dusty backrooms of your mind (indeed maybe they are the only themes which do so).”
So, c’mon! What d’ya say? Make a little time for your ol’ buddy Sam, why don’t you? Or at LEAST, do him a solid and check out the lead-off track “Stride On”, down below and pre-order the album on CD or LP. I mean, sure; a LOT has changed for you since those grubby college-rock days, but doesn’t a break from “Hellish Miasma” sound kinda nice?
Bugger Me tracklisting:
01. Stride On
02. Tough Times In Plastic Land / Everybody Loves A War
03. Shined It On / Lobotomy Eggs
04. The Tucchus pt. I
05. Cruisin Thru / Just Like The Rest
06. Fordana
07. Corpse Rider
08. The Tucchus pt. II
09. Bugger Me
More about: Quasi, Sam Coomes
