Cracker - Kerosene Hat poll

"Euro-Trash Girl" is the greatest hidden track hit of the 90s!

http://www.troll.me/images/thumbs-up-jesus-says/alex-my-man-you-are-awesome-thumb.jpg

lol

i really should listen to the whole album, thoguh, i liked all the hits at the time but never bothered to pick up the CD. who else in pop culture was making references to meth labs in 1993?

it's a good driving album. 'i want everything' is prob the only weak cut on here. the cover of 'loser' (jerry garcia) is tremendously excellent.

cover of 'loser' (jerry garcia) is tremendously excellent.

otm

<em>i really should listen to the whole album, thoguh, i liked all the hits at the time but never bothered to pick up the CD. who else in pop culture was making references to meth labs in 1993?</em>

beck, primus

ah yes, primus. beck wasn't in pop culture in 93, though.

should have been 'euro-trash POLL', dunno what you were thinking.

"Lonesome Johnny Blues" is the only one I'd jump up and skip if the cd was playing. Going "Euro-Trash Girl" because it was a huge surprise live when I saw them before the Tucson EP came out. Such a fun and silly song.

Get Off This is so great.

Love this album. Off the top of my head, I'm calling "Take Me Down To The Infirmary", but I'm also really partial to "Movie Star" and "I Ride My Bike".

xp: Get Off This is A+ trolling.

"Take Me Down to the Infirmary" gets so right what they get so so wrong in "I Want Everything".

I realized recently that the Cracker/Camper Van Beethoven aspect of my listening schedule has been supplanted by the Silver Jews. Like, the dark, ironic country rock indie aspect, I guess?

voted "Eurotrash Girl" (tried to live out that song my first time to the old country, never ended up on my knees for the sergeant though), but yeah "Loser" is fabulous; I didn't know it was a cover for like a decade afterwards, & still prefer the Cracker take. After that, probably "Movie Star".

still prefer the first Cracker album though

xp: Get Off This is A+ trolling.

Haha yes, that's why I love it.

I would have gone for "Movie Star," but I've been in bands that played it and, as a bass part, it's second only to maybe "Abacab" or "Come Sail Away" in dullness.

Euro Trash Girl

Sometimes I miss the days of 99-track CDs

wd have to re-listen, prefer Teen Angst from debut

yeah teen angst was a definite standout but wasn't kerosene hat a much better record overall? or am i completely misremembering?

it was.

I sold this, it felt like a big comedown after the excellent debut.

Still, "Euro Trash Girl".

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

this was another one in used bins by '95. I guess it's worth buying eh?

yeah teen angst was a definite standout but wasn't kerosene hat a much better record overall? or am i completely misremembering?

― it's smdh time in America (will), Wednesday, May 23, 2012 3:54 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it was.

― j., Thursday, May 24, 2012 2:02 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You guys are backwards on this. First s/t album was really solid, then every other one was just a bunch of filler around some singles.

I just kept the debut and the excellent hits and oddities comp Garage D'Or. All you need.

I had Garage d'Or at one time. Don't know what happened to it. Probably will refrain instead of voting "Low" (which I still love)

loved this album at the time. still can't help it and voting "Low."

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Works for me.

Really thought "I Ride My Bike" would have placed and didn't expect to be the only vote for "Take Me Down to the Infirmary".

https://medium.com/cuepoint/robert-christgau-expert-witness-c6bbb809c6b7

Cracker: Berkeley to Bakersfield
(429)

Camper van Beethoven joker-in-chief turned Cracker singer-songspokesperson David Lowery was always too ironic by approximately 72 percent. But he’s older than that now. The Californian turned Georgian pursues what musical career remains to him, lectures in business at UGA, and devotes much of his energy to his unofficial post as scourge-in-chief of a supposedly futuristic streaming economy that he claims, accurately, is “unsticking it to the man and sticking it the weirdo freak musicians!” And this crusade has awakened in him an explicit class consciousness often discernible in his songs from the start and just as often undercut by his snark. The Berkeley disc of this double-CD celebrates what might be called protest culture, lobbing stink bombs at the rich as it celebrates the lifestyles of the quasi-bohemian lower middle class. The Bakersfield disc aims for an Inland Empire country-rock that goes soft the way country-rock does but still sneaks a migrant laborer and a dead junkie in with the San Bernardino boy and the red-state union man, neither of whom lack charm themselves. Politics! On an American rock album! So much rarer a thing than the snark-damaged claim! A MINUS

The Golden Age is a good album. It’s not near the level of this one, but there are some tremendously eerie “surf guitar via the desert” tracks that work for me every time (Big Dipper, Bicycle Spaniard, The Golden Age.)

Big Dipper is one of their very best.

Last Camper albums seemed like sub-par Cracker. Very disappointing.

^^from berkeley to bakersfield is great — dispenses w the more jokey for more wry humor and a lot of it is kinda moving. totally excellent and overlooked by me til now.

It really is great, I like it a lot. Are any of the albums between it and Forever worth hearing?

not sure, i kinda checked out after Gentleman's Blues (which i didn't listen to that much either.) I read the negative pitchfork review of Forever the other day, like pretty much all early-to-mid era PF reviews it's full of uninformed shit opinions. It's spurred me on to have a listening sesh soon, start w/revisiting Gentleman's Blues, and all the way thru Greenland.

feel like kerosene hat remains their classic, though i might argue that the golden age has their highest peaks. the s/t is still fun. They remain kinda underrated considering everything, they aren't "eclectic" in the same way CVB and lie within their shadow culturally but they're great. and Berkeley to Bakersfield feels like more of a major statement than any band supposedly 20+ years beyond their sell-by date would be able to release.

Forever is where I stopped paying attention until I checked back in with Berkeley, I will always defend the three album run starting with Kerosene Hat as one of the most underrated runs of the decade (in other words, you are otm big time).

Greenland is as good as Forever if I remember right. Countrysides is pretty fun, especially their take on Springsteen’s “Sinaloa Cowboys.”

Here come ol’ kerosene hat

I finally picked up a copy of Berkeley to Bakersfield, because my kid has become obsessed with the song "Almond Grove" to the point that he's playing it on the piano.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5VEojXFtyI

I don't know if it's going to wind up being their last album, but they really did go out on on ambitious high if so.

Never listened to much after mid 90s, but from here listened to Berkeley to Bakersfield.

A lot of mid for me, but rave-up San Bernadino Boy, at least, is a keeper. Whose vox they are, I cannot guess. Cannot be lowery.