Crabstick - Stud or Houseboy?

Crabstick – Stud or Houseboy?
Time to Develop, 1990
Acquired: Love Garden Blowout Location, Used, 2009
Price: $1.25

Man, this is some weirdo lo-fi indie rock from sometime in the 90s. I haven't yet figured out what year this comes from though. It has pangs of early EARLY Pavement and early early Sebadoh, natch. I basically bought this because the cover was really REALLY rad and the album title was pretty rad too. It also has a kind of British sound to it, or the singer's voice at least. Like the slower Boyracer tunes. I would guess this comes from the 1992-1993 era, though, because it sounds like it was recorded in someone's bedroom. OH! Problem solved! They're Australian! After a little detective work, I've discovered that brothers David & Mike Nichols contributed to the Cannanes! And I'm pretty sure David was a full time member/founding member. Yep, this is pretty fucking awesome and as this record has played on it's grown on me more and more. I've got the Cannanes excellent A Love Affair with Nature in my collection and it's nice knowing that this record collection is loosely connected. Like I could do a six degrees of separation thing! Neat! And I was wrong, it's 1990! For more insight on this record, check out THIS blog entry and read the comment left by David Nichols. It's kind of weird, but quite informative! I particularly enjoy the line about how the lo-fi tag “shits [him].” I kind of dig that this isn't really available on CD (or maybe it is, my research kind of ended after googling Crabstick “Stud or houseboy”). There's something special about that, about digging something like this up and picking it up for super cheap. It's not necessarily great, or even very good, but it's worth it just for “Cardboard Keg,” which is a total jam. And really, I think I cited them as "lo-fi" because of the shambling nature of most of the songs. That's not a bad thing, though!