My Old Friend Is A Monster

Criminally overlooked new wave indie garage (art house) rockers from early '80s Lawrence, Kansas. A fierce blend of jangle and chunky riffage, noodling post-punk bass, hiccuping forcebeat rhythm, and a spastically singular lead voice permanently caught between horny swagger and pubescent emotional crisis. Lyrics are merely willfully obtuse or throbbing hooky eminations from the Id: this post's title, "I must have been stung once," "I think I like you, for goodness sake," "going on a sex drive," "pass my life, pass it by," "roaming through the woods of love," "brought up on hoodoo hive," "if you try, don't try," "we won't be coming back," etc. Their too-cool-for-school (all members wear Clark Kent glasses)revenge-of-the-nerds demeanor (quintessentially Amerindie punk, actually) might appear dated but The Embarrassment make it work because they make every song sound as though they'd stayed up all night cramming. Unheard classic.



Only Al Green could take a song as precious as this one (guess I have a thing for Bee gees songs these days) and make it sound overbearingly sexual, almost menacing. It seems amongst soul man afficianodos Al is appreciated mostly as an eccentric. I'm okay with that: there is definitely an ethereal fragility to Green's art. But this is also a guy who sustained his artistry in peak form for at least five albums, far more than Otis or Sam or Wilson. I resist the label "genius" because of its connotation of inheritance (you're either born with it or not) but I don't know what else to call the whole-body musicality of Al Green.