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Lovely Little Girls – Effusive Supreme (SkinGraft Records) – Be good to your shoes? Shoes have never been good to me, Bobby Conn has great shoes, or boots, stack heel glam rock boots, he wore them at the Powerhaus, those were shoes to be good to. more about him and that Sounds To Make You Shudder! thing he was on alongside Lovely Little Girls in a moment. And so,yes, Lovely Little Girls, without much of a warning, announced a new album a couple of weeks ago, we did mention this, someone stopped me the other day demanding to know why we hadn’t, complaining that there was way too much art and not enough music coverage on the Organ pages these days, his complaint came in just after an irate call from someone telling us that Organ would be far better without all the damn music that gets in the way of all the art, this is generally why we keep our phone number to ourselves and we’re well aware of how you like to allocate your saliva and come on people, just scroll down the front page and the menu of features, check out the never ending parade of pages we put up, check out what we posted last week or last month or last year or ten years ago or ten years after and I;m going home in a helicopter and those thousands of eyes staring back at you.
Do rather like that this new Lovely Little Girls album and the finger prints and the tissues you need, an album that while being and sounding like no one other than Chicago’s gloriously unique and beautifully absurd Lovely Little Girls, sounds rather different to their previous albums. Of course there are still the guts falling out and sudden flash fires and that undertone that kind of makes you want to go wash your hands or at least draw your curtains and zoom zoom, pow, they do still sound like a deranged comic book and oh, the medicine and how romantic.
That bit there sounds like a rather forward moving slice of prime a Lalo Schifrin soundtrack and that bit there sounds rather like a rather healthy bit of Magma, there’s not so much Cardiacish going off and things this time, there are still the wonderfully absurd bits that you’d expect, they are still as hard-boiled and difficult as as ever and oh those jarring contrasts, oh those intricate waves of weaves, those songs that do indeed heave and dance. They are as gracefully awkward as ever, as vivid, of course they still disturb, and yes they do border on bad taste or at least obtuse taste at times but hey, all done in a most tasteful of ways (or something like that)
“Lovely Little Girls are a theatrical art-rock band from Chicago that features members of Cheer-Accident and The Flying Luttenbachers. They specialize in odd harmonies and catchy melodies served with a histrionic flair”.
Effusive Supreme, their third album for SkinGraft Records, delves into what we’re told is “more personal and abstract territory, highlighting the utilitarian and fetishistic relationship to shoes on one track, while enthusiastically accepting ego-death’s indifferent embrace on the next. Equally informed by Magma and Dead Kennedys, Lovely Little Girls pull from a range that runs the gamut yards past the finish line – everything from Esquivel to Toto”.
Is it just a touch more jazzy this time, does it breathe just a little more, is it sin or medicine, does it kind of honk like a gang of left field geese? Is the mess upsetting? No, but that is a slightly unfamiliar scent wafting, it all very theatrical, there are lots of fluids or fluid bits, it is grotesquely angelic, no not angelic, far from angelic, it is kind of disturbed, or disturbing and she does cry out into the void.
And even if I close my eyes? And there’s outrageous Celtic Frost cover again (you might have encountered it on last year’s excellent Sounds To Make You Shudder! compilation) and anyway, where did that bit of cheesecake go? And what was that bit about? Did I hear that bit correctly? And that bit does sound like Magma again, this time on a fairground ride and your socks have fallen down and look look looooook, this is just as damn weird and out there as ever and those angles are so wrong they’re kind of beautifully right and well, three rather unique albums in and with those shoes on your feet you really can’t lose. Lovely Little Girls have come up with the (slightly disturbing) goods again. (sw)
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Meanwhile that compilation we just mentioned up there, the one that features Lovely Little Girls, Bobby Conn and his shoes, David Yow, Flying Luttenbachers and a whole load of other SkinGraft-related superstars, that excellent SkinGraft compilation that came out last Halloween on both CD, cassette and as a download to celebrate 150 releases on what is probably the best record label in the world is now going to happen as a vinyl release, if you want it to that is. Am I that bothered about compilations being on vinyl I thought to myself? Nah, not really, but hey, hang on, some of most treasured pieces of vinyl are compilations, those early Stiff releases, that Some Bizarre album, yes, of course I’m bothered. So anyway, the label that started as a comic back in the last century, celebrated 150 releases last year with the Sounds To Make You Shudder! album and they’re now working on a vinyl version. Here the link to the Organ review from back there in 2022 – ORGAN THING: SkinGraft Records, 150 not out, and what gloriously celebration of a compilation album featuring those Flying Luttenbachers, Terms, David Yowie, Bobby Conn, Lovely Little Girls, Pili Coït, Tijuana Hercules and quite a few more…
And here’s the word direct from the label – “Hi Everyone, this is Mark writing. I’m still living and working just outside of Vienna, Austria while John holds down the fort in Chicago. I hope all is super with you. It has cooled down here, so things are off to a good start! I’ve got a big update today. I’ll get right to it… We have the new album from Chicago’s LOVELY LITTLE GIRLS coming out August 18th – and also – SKiN GRAFT is launching a Kickstarter campaign for a Deluxe Gatefold Double LP of our Halloween album “Sounds To Make You Shudder!”. You may already know that SKiN GRAFT Records grew out of a punk comic-zine that my friend Rob and I published back in the 80’s. In those days, when a comic series reached an anniversary issue, like number 100 or 250, it was celebrated with a double-sized special. Late in the summer of last year, I hit upon the idea of putting together a Halloween album for our 150th release, as a kind of “tip-of-the hat” to the cool Halloween LPs of yesteryear….”
And so, the long and short of it is that Mark and the Skingrafters want to release some vinyl and to do this they need to kickstart and this is a direct link to their campaign and with that I need to go throw some paint at something…
Bandcamp
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THE ORGAN 
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