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LP
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DC 208LP
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2025 repress. 180 gram pressing, embossed sleeve. "Starting in the mid-'90s, the U.S. Maple saga was rent open, seam by seam, over ten long, sweaty years, like a ripple of mirages exploding up around the bend. Theirs was a dues-paid elevation of good old rock 'n roll values that reached dizzyingly high, past the blunt force of their immediate '80s- '90s forebears and the magisterial arc of the venerated classic rockers before them. Their music is a rapacious, constantly morphing ooze through which can be sighted gristled flecks and shards of glam, punk, blues, metal, funk, jazz and other denuded musical formations to be grabbed upon and squeezed til the juice runs down your leg. Released in April 2001, Acre Thrills is the most danceable, sensual and subcutaneous of all their offerings, 'Ma Digital' their most kicking song EVER. It ain't alone -- captured by Brian Paulson, the workings of the trio within the quartet were greased to absolute slickness, with Todd Rittmann/Mark Shippy's guitars and Pat Samson's drums collectively divining and conquering the songs' rhythm and harmony, while also playing in what appeared to be their own private imaginations. With his signature succession of consumptive wheezes and acid-tongued utterances, Al Johnson -- for some, the most unlikely front man of the rock 'n roll era (and to others, their own private Jim Morrison) -- drew it all together immaculately."
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LP
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DC 250LP
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2025 repress. Vinyl LP version. "Starting in the mid-'90s, the U.S. Maple saga was rent open, seam by seam, over ten long, sweaty years, like a ripple of mirages exploding up around the bend. Theirs was a dues-paid elevation of good old rock 'n roll values that reached dizzyingly high, past the blunt force of their immediate '80s- '90s forebears and the magisterial arc of the venerated classic rockers before them. Their music is a rapacious, constantly morphing ooze through which can be sighted gristled flecks and shards of glam, punk, blues, metal, funk, jazz and other denuded musical formations to be grabbed upon and squeezed til the juice runs down your leg. Their final LP, recorded with Jeremy Lemos, Purple On Time dropped in late 2003, and found new drummer Adam Vida cannily replacing the fairly departed Pat Samson. With consolidations and developments heavy on the ground, the band once more surged and retarded in near-orchestral precision, as Johnson's voice swooped through fresh ranges. The songs were tangy, more rock than ever, yet just as potent when it came to drawing forth that thrusting, demented hip-shake that they induced in 'their faithful.'"
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LP
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DC 164LP
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2025 repress. "Starting in the mid-'90s, the U.S. Maple saga was rent open, seam by seam, over ten long, sweaty years, like a ripple of mirages exploding up around the bend. Theirs was a dues-paid elevation of good old rock 'n roll values that reached dizzyingly high, past the blunt force of their immediate '80s- '90s forebears and the magisterial arc of the venerated classic rockers before them. Their music is a rapacious, constantly morphing ooze through which can be sighted gristled flecks and shards of glam, punk, blues, metal, funk, jazz and other denuded musical formations to be grabbed upon and squeezed til the juice runs down your leg. Talker, their Drag City debut, came on in the summer of 1999, its discrete shades of soundscape yawning like an open fly, dangling like shirttails through silence into previously unimagined spaces of width and depth. Having Swans' Michael Gira on to produce was big, but bigger still was the group's vigilant sense of what they were up to -- at that exact moment, a sequence of 'back to school' reflections with singer Al Johnson as your skeezy JD/Virgilian guide. Their tactile cloak of intimacies/detritus/little jokes/lucid dreams/vast emptiness was the perfect cover for a deceptive populism."
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