Godspeed the Punchline

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Godspeed the Punchline
Studio album by Trumans Water
Released January 1994
Recorded 1993
Genre Indie rock
Label Homestead
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svgStar empty.svg [1]
Washington Post (favorable) [2]

Godspeed the Punchline is an LP by Trumans Water. It was released in January 1994 by Homestead Records in the United States and Elemental Records in the UK. [3] This album was preceded by three other "Godspeed" albums--Godspeed the Static, Godspeed the Vortex and Godspeed the Hemorrhage--all of which featured improvised, lo-fi music. Godspeed the Punchline can probably be considered the proper, studio follow-up to Spasm Smash XXXOXOX Ox & Ass . It is the last studio album recorded with Glen Galloway before he left to form Soul-Junk. The album was described as "eighteen short blasts of negasonic tumult" by David Sprague of Trouser Press , [4] while Mark Jenkins of The Washington Post stated that the songs "can wander aimlessly or suddenly turn on the siren and race straight to their destination". [2]

Trumans Water is an indie rock band from San Diego, California formed in 1991. They have released over a dozen albums over their career, on which they collaborated with acts in genre, including Azalia Snail, Chan Marshall and Thurston Moore.

Homestead Records record label

Homestead Records was a Long Island, New York-based sublabel of music distributor Dutch East India Trading. It was founded in 1984 by Sam Berger, who was the American independent buyer for Dutch East India Trading. Berger was finding that many bands who had perhaps released their own first 45 were having difficulty coming up with the finances to press followups. He was able to convince Barry Tennenbaum, the owner of the company, to press and distribute records for bands that already had recorded an album, and have the bands supply the artwork. It is considered instrumental in launching the post-hardcore and noise rock genres. When Berger left to work with Midnight Records, he recommended 18-year-old Gerard Cosloy, whom he knew from Boston and who published a fanzine that Homestead distributed. Cosloy went on to sign many of the notable acts. Cosloy was succeeded by Ken Katkin and later by Steven Joerg. The label's last release was Ivo Perelman's Cama de terra in 1996.

Spasm Smash XXXOXOX Ox & Ass is the second album by Trumans Water. It is their first double-album and was released in 1993 on Homestead Records in the United States and Elemental Records in the UK. There is also a Japanese re-release of the album with a radically different track listing. Everett True, in a 1993 review of the album, described it "Imagine Pavement if they were five Gary Youngs with the songwriting ability of two Steve Malkmuses". Chris Sharp, writing in Lime Lizard stated "there are 20 tracks here, but each one feels like at least three songs grafted together in some bizarre musico-genetic experiment".

Track listing

  1. "Destroy 1998" - 0:41
  2. "Long End of a Firearm" - 4:47
  3. "All Wet West of Washington" - 2:29
  4. "Hair Junk Fibre" - 1:22
  5. "Ungalaxy" - 0:38
  6. "Antsmashes Yer Star (Dead Airwaves)" - 3:48
  7. "Enflamed" - 3:40
  8. "Outpatient Lightspeed" - 2:56
  9. "Infinity Times Zero" - 0:13
  10. "Sucker Mystique" - 2:10
  11. Playboy Stabtone Bloodbath Go" - 2:38
  12. "Slander in New Slang" - 2:33
  13. "No Big (Wave) Star" - 2:37
  14. "Theme of Blast" - 0:34
  15. "Fuller Piston Vinegar" - 3:35
  16. "22" - 2:33
  17. "Horsesense" - 1:54
  18. "Spaceship Next Door" - 1:18

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References

  1. ↑ Cramer, Stephen "Godspeed the Punchline Review", Allmusic , Macrovision Corporation, retrieved 21 November 2009
  2. 1 2 Jenkins, Mark (1994) "Trumans Water: Rants & Rave-Ups", Washington Post , 25 March 1994
  3. ↑ Strong, Martin C. (2003) The Great Indie Discography, Canongate, ISBN   1-84195-335-0, p. 1039
  4. ↑ Sprague, David "Trumans Water", Trouser Press , retrieved 21 November 2009
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