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Friday, April 12, 2019

Care Of The Cow - Dogs' Ears Are Stupid [Mental Experience 028 Promo]

Put on the circuit on March 21st, 2k19 via Mental Experience is "Dogs' Ears Are Stupid", the first ever re-release of the 1983 cassette only album by the Chicago-based band outfit Care Of The Cow. An underground tip ever since the roughly 50 minutes long ten track album opens with "Chinese Food Part I" a fascinating, expressive cut of SynthRock featuring loads of dramatic, theatrical female vocals and echoes of TexMex elements whereas "Cemetery" is following on a similar path although being slightly more Psychedelia- and ProgRock-infused and turning towards an unexpected climax, "Like Me" balances the line between Psychedelia, Americana and twangy DreamFolk before "Chinese Food Part II" gets back to cascading SynthWave / Cosmic / Krautrock structures for those who know - especially thinking bands like La Düsseldorf here. Listening to "Oceans In My Ears" Care Of The Cow are exploring a kind of summery, laid-back and Reggae-influenced offbeat vibe which should be a heavy rotation daytime radio hit in a better world, the albums title track "Dogs' Ears Are Stupid" goes down as a weird, yet highly effective 4/4-based dancefloor smash and "Australia / The Sleepwalker Bites Herself In French" provides more of a spiralling, looped KrautRock-vibe paired with hints of Cosmic and even Balearic ProtoAmbient before turning into a dreamy Pop workout. Furthermore "European Trains" seem to ride faster fueled by a fusion of dramatic Rock, PostPunk and raw, lo-fi MinimalWave-drums, "No Beethoven" seems to hark back to classic Opera choirs and combines these with cut-up, repetetive vocal bits whereas the concluding bonus track "Dancing Partners", another killer jam for advanced dancefloors, reveals the romantic, intense and dramatic value of the bands' output. Defo a massive album, especially considered that all this material was originally released 36 years ago.

Promo artwork on Instagram!

2 comments:

  1. hi, thnx for the review!!!
    just a behind the scenes factoid about No Beethoven. Victor Sanders' concept.
    Victor schlepped me into the vocal booth and told me to sing against the Beethoven recording.
    then he took everything out of my headphones and made me sing track upon track! Oh, Victor, you must be kidding.
    Ha ha ha!
    xxx,
    X Baczewska

    ReplyDelete
  2. sounds like a proper artistic concept :D

    ReplyDelete