Hope Chest: The Fredonia Recordings 1982–1983

Sit down!

While I wouldn't call this essential listening, there are some incredible deep cuts in this collection of early material from the band. "Planned Obsolescence" has the weirdest guitar lead I've ever heard in a song, making a song that's already bizarre with Natalie's less experienced vocals, even more Intriguing.

"Groove Dub" is actually anything but a dub track, and has weird guitar as well, I believe he's using an organ-pedal effect to get his guitar to sound like that. It's by far one of the biggest surprises on this record for me. You've got the frantic guitar and bass leads on "Daktari", the time-tested "My Mother The War", and of course wonderful "Pit Viper" makes an appearance here too.

But between this stellar highlights are half-baked song ideas and some rather boilerplate jangle pop from the band's fledgling era. "Katrina's Fair" and "National Education Week" are just a couple of the many songs on here that don't catch my attention as much. I suppose if you really wanted to round out your collection of songs from 10kM, this one is fine, but I could take or leave it.