Friday, June 17, 2011

I Can't Help You At All



If you're at all interested in the sort of rock that bands like The Nils, Squirrel Bait, Doughboys, and Government Issue were exploring in the first early post-hardcore years, then Moving Targets' superior mid-80's output is well worth looking into. If you haven't heard "Burning In Water" yet-- and I'm constantly running into people who haven't-- then you should definitely check it out, as it's no doubt one of my top five favorite LPs from that era, plus it's still pretty easy to find. Their later stuff, while still good, slips a little bit; not that the songs slowed down at all or that all the hooks went away, just that there wasn't the same energy As it is, "Away From Me" is fairly typical of Moving Targets' later stuff: an okay song with a decent enough hook, almost poppy enough to sound like something that could've been on one of those Cher Doll compilations that came out 5 or 6 years later. The two songs on the flip are from a WERS Metrowave broadcast, and sound a bit tougher; I know that "Selfish" is an older song, one of the ones that was on the "Bands That Could Be God" compilation. Even though the sticker on the front says "limited edition", this is still a Taang! single, meaning there were probably a billion different colors pressed and you can still buy it from the label for $2.50 (I know there's at least three different colors of this 7" sitting at Brass City Records right now).




Moving Targets -

"Away From Me"

"Falling"

"Selfish"


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting this, for all my 80's punk knowledge i was unawares of this fine bad. I bought the first 2 immediately and it is certainly fine fine fine. —Brendan

Brushback said...

That's awesome!

Anonymous said...

Fantastic single !!!
The difference betwen their "Burning in water" stuff and the later releases is the phenomnal production of "Burning in water". Albums like "Brave noise" or "Fall", despite the fact that they are really good, suffer a bit from the less excellent mixing. The sound on "Burning in water" as well as on this single is more dense than on other Targets-releases.
This single´s sound reminds a lot of "Burning..." and is indeed very close to the masterpiece "Burning in water"

Brushback said...

Weirdly enough, this comment came through just as I was in the middle of listening to "Take This Ride" for the first time in about two years...