Number Seven Uptown

by Swearing at Motorists

Overview

There's something about suburban basements that breeds intimate, warm, miserably hopeful singer/songwriters. They come to the surface from time to time offering heartfelt, stark, quirky four-track demos to the world. With his early odd homebrew, Beck was a pioneer of the recent era, and Canadian gloom-folkie Hayden and Palace Brother Will Oldham have continued down a similar road. They all make recordings that offer a private snapshot of fragile psyches and inner maladjustment. Now, Swearing at Motorists from Dayton, OH, exudes this same subterranean feel. On their second major release Number Seven Uptown, drummer Don Thrasher (Guided by Voices) and singer/multi-instrumentalist Dave Doughman punch through 15 short songs about TV shows, talking on the phone, and unrequited love. Richly layered and overdubbed with dissonant harmonies, the songs are striking in the way that Doughman doubles his vocals, producing a lo-fi version of the kind of high harmony one might hear in Irish folk (or perhaps similar to how it might sound if Built to Spill covered an entire Varnaline album). The heavy-rock sea shanty "Flying Pizza" and the Tortoise-influenced "Talking Pictures" capture the diverse songcrafting of this team, and the bouncing horn section on "Calgon Take Me Away" brightens what would otherwise be a crushingly depressing song. Released in late 2000 on Secretly Canadian records, Number Seven Uptown is like finding a long forgotten crate of Dylan records in your mom's basement. ~ Zac Johnson

Product Details

Release Date:	10/24/2000
Label:	Secretly Canadian
UPC:	0656605003221
Rank:	167806

Tracks

1. Flying Pizza
2. Inadvertant Christmas Song
3. Thin Man from North Main
4. Prelude to a Miss
5. Numbers Have Too Many Meanings to Me
6. Dog with the Lampshade Head
7. Bullet
8. Calgon Take Me Away
9. Maybe Zorro
10. Talking Pictures
11. Flying Pizza
12. Left on Forest
13. Three Wishes
14. Drunk on Monday
15. One More Next Time

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Swearing at Motorists   Primary Artist

Technical Credits

Swearing at Motorists   Composer