big muff big muff big muff! no not a typed ode to the joys of fuzzy oral pleasure. but another about-fucking-time psychey garagey protopunky resissue. and further proof that nothing bad came come of a band indulging in the big muff.
born of that weirdy scene in seventies cleveland ohio that also threw up rocket from the tombs and electric eelsand pere ubu and the dead boys, mirrors most exemplified the post-vu pre-punk shenanigans kicking off. sounding as they did like lou reed with a sense of humour, dylan without the reliance on rhyming dictionary, rftt with a bit of songwriterly polish, the kinks all fucked up, the modern lovers without the arched eyebrow
a seven inch, compilations and the odd banrupt label proper release has been pretty much the extent of it since 197entywhatever. until now. with this lovely proper old vinyl release. which collects fifteen tracks off the hearthan single, those were different times cleveland comp and a bunchof others.
they exist(ed) somewhere between the sixties and seventies, with artschool and garage moves and psyche glam prog. so you get the mad jiggered fuzz-out groove of she smiled wild. which has that ugly ramshackle quality of a siltbreeze or woodsist record. sounds utterly modern with it’s unhinged vocals and spastic fuzzed lead and velvet underground chug. i could draw you a line between mirrors and psychedelic horseshit. it’d be a fucked squiggly monged line. but a line nonetheless.
or there’s the amusing ‘love me fuck you’ of the stooges / vu rip-off cindy & kathy. or the sloppy jangle of how could i which sounds like a halfbreed of first and third album velvets. pretty much where the whole crude weirdy shenaigans started. to quote the ever wry jamie klimek: “realizing that i needed only 2/3 of my vast musical knowledge to play ‘heroin’, we were off.”
anyhoo this collection’s remastered by john golden, in a tip-on sleeve and limited to something like 800 copies. and it’s ace. ace.
