Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Don't Shake Hands With The Wrong Ones



I tend to prefer the noiser Kleenex Girl Wonder/Boyracer style of lo-fi pop over the really twee stuff, and Sportsguitar fall on the right side of that equation. Good if you like Portastatic, too.

I love how the recorder (or whatever that flute-sounding thing is) starts out really sweet and cheerful during "A Short Day", and then turns all distorted and really fucking annoying. Shit like that makes me laugh. This 45 is brilliant, and Sportsguitar are geniuses. I think they were on Matador, too, though it's hard to tell because Matador keeps such a low profile. Maybe they should send more of their records to Chromewaves and Brooklyn Vegan, or try starting up a YouTube channel, I don't know.


click for enlarged view

Sportsguitar -

"He's So Funny"

"A Short Day"

"Police Academy"

(these files are now listen-only)


click for enlarged view


click for enlarged view

5 comments:

ib said...

This group have a brilliant sound, despite have one of the worst names I can imagine. Seriously!

Police Academy has a really nice feel to it, especially. On first listen, anyway. I'm a sucker for that chopped up Neil Young inspired rolling intro.
Great stuff. Are they actually from Switzerland, or is that just the label contact info ?

Brushback said...

I always thought Sportsguitar was a great name! They are from Switzerland.

ib said...

I don't know why - other than the fact that I'm surmising from your blog title and your older fanzine material that you're a dedicated baseball fan - but I guessed you would approve of the name!

Really good band, anyways. I'm glad too that they're Swiss; I don't know of any other bands from that neck of the woods (or mountains, or whatever).

Speaking of continental groups, I lived in Holland very briefly. There was a band from there called Alabama Kids who I was convinced were going to make it big. I neglected to buy their CD when I was out in NL, possibly because of that very fact. I think they were from Eindhoven or Rotterdam. Somewhere in the south, anyway. There's very little info on them I can find.

Brushback said...

ib, I just dropped you a little note; there's a whole bunch of Alabama Kids stuff listed on Gemm.

Brushback said...

The mp3 files on this post are now listen-only (non-downloadable) files. TOUGH LUCK, CHARLIE! No, actually, for those of you who missed the boat, I will do my best to respond to any e-mailed requests for the original files.