The Spy In the Mes
And that's why I breathe through the illusion of wanting
Polynation

This record has been tough for me to listen to, not necessarily as a result of the music, but to even open up the case to put the cd in the player. The artwork is so atrocious (which is an understatement) that I really struggled to get past that barrier to listen to what's underneath. It's a bit of a shame too, because some of the tracks on here ("Episode 3 1! 2! 3! 4!", "SmallBlondeFreakyMother" and "Dearest dearest") are pretty good. But it's just left me a bit confused, because if a band puts this much effort into writing songs and compiling them into an album, they'd have better artwork (that would actually refelct their indie/alt rock circus sound) rather than really, really bad graffitti sketches that would even look out of place in the early nineties. In the music industry, (sadly) image sells as much as the recorded output, and if they're projecting themselves to be bad visually, then one would assume the plastic circle inside is bad as well, which is quite defeatist, and ultimately disappointing to me.
- Matt Giordano