专辑简介

The Great Plains专辑介绍：by Karen E. GravesOne of the biggest accomplishments of this, the second full-length from Columbus, OH's Great Plains is that it proves that rock & roll can be smart and fun. While frontman Ron House would later take his nasal sing-speak and increasingly snide lyrical slant and front the noisy '90s indie punk outfit Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, here his songs have wiseguy in-jokes, but more importantly, they're strong, catchy songs. Propelled by and large musically by the warm hum of Mark Wyatt's bouncy, Mott the Hoople-by-way-of-seminary organ playing, Naked at the Buy, Sell, and Trade has the fun, bop-around-the-record-player feel of jangly '60s pop acts, but retains a clear punk rock sensibility. Vintage-sounding without coming across as being dated; lo-fi before there truly was such a thing. Most notable among Naked at the Buy, Sell, and Trade's 13 tracks are the criminally catchy clap-along "Dick Clark" and House's wry ode to the underground, "Letter to a Fanzine." Featuring lines like "Isn't my haircut really intense?/Isn't Nick Cave a genius in a sense?" and posing the age-old question "Why do punk rock guys go out with new wave girls?," "Letter to a Fanzine" found a fan in wacky music aficionado Dr. Demento and gained airplay on his radio program. A markedly more somber track, "Chuck Berry's Orphan" is a carryover from House's pre-Great Plains outfit Moses Carryout. With lyrics like "The big city had nothing for us/They said we needed a pretty chorus," the song could be read as a premonition of what will ultimately be House's band-ending dissatisfaction with never rising above the status of being critical darlings (which they were, having drawn praise from the likes of Robert Christgau and Greil Marcus).