WALL OF GROG

Mad Nanna

I Made Blood Better

Negative Guest List LP 2012

What the world needs now, I take it, is another mile marker on the road of "gone." From the wilds of the Land That Keeps on Giving (lately), Australia, come Mad Nanna, slightly altering¹ their Goaty Tapes release to make their 12" debut. Though it weren’t covered in twigs and grubs when I slid off its jacket, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Both sides of this…thing throb with post-police wake-up/holly-bush-facial/where-am-i-and-what-happened. It stands up on newborn legs, makes a D-grade effort to iron its shirt, and reenters society in search of another crunchy pillow (preferably one indoors).

Jandek comparisons are the pizza-flavored Combos of the music review vending machine; a call to Orkin when you need a hitman. Suffice to say, there have been acts and records like this about once a decade for at least 40 years and, sez me, you need all of ‘em. They are the trips for biscuits, the busted mornings, the anthems of mistake that warm the wormy-hearted. I can’t tell if these dudes (perhaps the most awkward assemblage of crumbs I’ve yet peeped, by the way) are writing melodies or just gently warping the tapes, and I don’t mean some Kevin Shields shit. I’m talking dead hoofers and all thumb jamborees, blowin brodies on bald tires til the break of dawn, with nary a try-hard in sight. “You Can’t Expect It,” is almost a song in that it has parts (plural!) and something (singular) akin to chops. But that’s about as close as they come to climbing into the box.

I assume this is one of the last howls of Negative Guest List, along with the Sky Needle LP and Ragtime Frank's The Truth, lest someone be brave enough to raise the torch. An appropriately muddied beginning for Mad Nanna’s vinyl career. Bravo!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go pound some vitamins. 

NEEDED.

¹(ejecting "Outside Donati's Meats,"--"A Day In the Life," made exclusively of burnt ends and smoked filters--which I was actually a touch bummed to see go)