John Terrill
Frowny Frown
FV60 CD
Between 1988 and 1998, John Terrill (co-founder of the late '70s new/no wave Dancing Cigarettes) recorded this album and made a few copies for close friends and for mailing to musical heroes. In another era it could have stood next to Scott Walker or Michael Hurley's early albums or even Randy Burns' LPs on ESP Disk. It's an out-of-time classic that mixes honey baked orchestration, acoustic soul, and pop-psychedelia into cracked and spellbinding songs. Now reissued for all and remastered with a bonus track from 1984.
"I feel this album is a little gem. Lyrically--a man up against it (Frowny Frown) as opposed to (Smiley Smile), but still leaning towards humor, kindheartedness, and no bitterness within the adversity. A very feeling album and all kinds of sonically interesting things. The kind of direction Brian Wilson might even have taken himself if his own circumstances had been different. Beach Boys meet Mothers of Invention. It has, then, the simplicity, innocence, and at the same time the musical innovation of the Beach Boys, plus the other side of the coin, the innovation of the Mothers of Invention. Sometimes almost like The Shadows or The Tornadoes performing at a 1960 wedding reception, and then sonic blasts and great instrumentation and arrangements peppered throughout. A musician who seems to have absorbed all kinds of previous things, and then created his own very original and absorbing album." -- Bill Fay, March 2008
The transparent velum packaging mirrors the handful of homemade copies John originally issued.
"Terrill still sounds like an earnest enough upstart with this stripped down music that recalls everything from the better moments of solo Richman (I Jonathan comes to mind) to Skip Spence wandering around aimlessly at the oar house, and danged if the use of harpsichord didn't plum recall that forgotten late-sixties classic Before There Was...Time and how often are you gonna come across anything that recalls that recent addition to the annals of boffo forgotten sixties goodies as that!" -- Black 2 ComReleased July 22, 2008.
