published: 24 /
11 /
2008
In our 'Re : View' section, in which our writers look back at albums from the past, Jon Rogers writes about former Galaxie 500 members Damon and Naomi's melancholic debut album, 'More Sad Hits', which has recently been reissued
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Naomi Yang and Damon Krukowski effectively gave up on the music industry in the aftermath of their previous groundbreaking band Galaxie 500 with Dean Wareham. It was only their friend and old producer Kramer who, after repeatedly badgering them, persuaded to return to the studio. The outcome was the beautiful, languid 'More Sad Hits', perfectly captured by the stunning Man Ray photograph on the cover.
'More Sad Hits' is just that. Sad but not depressive or morbid, more melancholic. And there weren’t any hits, in a commercial sense. When it was originally released on Shimmy Disc in 1992 the album came and went and was largely ignored. The album though is a little gem.
Taking its blue print from Robert Wyatt’s 'Rock Bottom', which the duo were listening to heavily at the time, the album is deceptively simple. There are bit of mellotron, backwards guitars, organs and the odd bit of psych-rock dabblings but for the most part songs like 'Little Red Record Co' and 'This Car Climbed Mt Washington' are Spartan and stripped down to the basics.
Yang’s vocals tend to be disengaged, almost numb but still manage to captivate, particularly on the opening 'ETA', and fit in perfectly with the mood of the record. The pair make it all sound so effortless. From Yang’s notes to accompany the reissue it certainly wasn’t effortless but they make it sound like it was.
It all comes together with the superb 'Once More'. The song meanders along ebbing and flowing but still managing to slowly build and develop and Yang and Krukowski just about let themselves go, ever so slightly.
The album is spoilt slightly by the closing 'This Changing World'. What were they thinking of putting a short, jazz-tinged drum solo at the start ? No.
'More Sad Hits' has been reissued once before by Sub Pop and this new edition adds nothing new to that or the original release so fans don’t get the usual extra cuts of outtakes and alternate takes. More often than not those versions aren’t really that special but they can be revealing. There’s none of that here and it might have been better to give a bit more context with at least a couple of unreleased versions. Effectively if you’ve got the album already there’s no incentive to pick up this version.
For those people, however, who have yet to be seduced by 'More Sad Hits' now’s your chance.
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