Pitchfork

The music of the Sun City Girls (1981-2007) was a heady, diverse and lovingly fucked-up mixture of arcane musical styles. These trixters presaged entire genres before they existed. Their gamut swung from improv to cowboy ballads, South American folk songs to Asian drone music, crazy lounge songs to creepy classic rock, spaced-out jams to prank-ish punk. They were what happens when the melting pot explodes, miscegenation in every dimension. If that line sounds way too much like the voice-over from the trailer to a bad 1960s movie, all the better, as kitsch was among the more sharply burnished implements in their arsenal. Acts as diverse as Sunburned Hand of the Man, Thinking Fellers, Dengue Fever, Six Organs of Admittance, Camper van Beethoven, and Les Georges Leningrad owe more than a little to their margin-walking legacy.

Each of their 80-or-so releases (including cassettes, LPs, CDs, singles, and one 10" 78) was different, at times markedly so. There were no safety nets at their incredible performances. They often antagonized and taunted audiences-- in truth, they trusted the audience greatly, so much that they were never willing to pander in any way. Everything was done in their own idiosyncratic fashion. The band was largely ignored by critics. They occasionally received glowing reviews, notably from The Wire (from Ian Christe in 1995 and Erik Davis in 2004). Of course, it didn't help that the Girls rarely sent out promo copies, toured only sporadically, and released too many records at one time.

Another reason the Girls were "unsuccessful" in terms of a career in underground rock is that they ignored the clamor to make more records like Torch of the Mystics (Majora, 1990). Torch is the thorny behemoth of the SCG discography. Otherworldly and melodic, it's undeniably among their best albums (and one of the ten best records of the 1980s, in my opinion). But the Girls made a dozen or two others that were of equal quality; they were simply more challenging listens. In time, the band would grow to dislike the record, and audience members' repeated suggestions to play songs from it would often be met with contemptuous stares and nicotine-fueled rants.

The first release on the Sun City Girls' own Abduction imprint since the group disbanded at the start of 2007 following the untimely death of unhinged and brilliant percussionist/raconteur Charles Gocher is a wonderful visit to the group's archives. Named for a 7" single of the same name, You're Never Alone with a Cigarette is a snapshot of the group in the late 1980s, right when they were reaching the peak of their powers. Six of the album's nine tracks were released on 7"s in the early 90s that you'd have to be some combination of lucky, old, and rich to already possess. And though the disc is on the short side at just under 40 minutes, the three previously unreleased tracks-- plus the expansion of "The Fine-Tuned Machines of Lemuria" from five to twelve minutes-- are sweet enough that SCG obsessives will be obliged to pick a copy. I should mention that longtime cohort Scott Colburn's remastering is astounding.

Recorded in July 1988 at the same sessions as Torch of the Mystics, these predominantly instrumental surf, raga, free jazz, rock, and uncategorizable numbers were originally meant to round Torch out into a double album. Due to one label (Placebo) collapsing and the second label (Majora)'s lack of funds, that version never materialized, which is a real shame. It would have shown more of the group's full breadth, from the pretty, "pan-Asian" songs of Torch to the thorny, ragged post-psychedelia on display here. Word is that there are plans for this to be released on vinyl sometime soon. Perhaps it could include the long out-of-print Torch material as well-- pretty please, with one hundred pounds of black olives on top?