4 out of 5

Label: Rough Trade

Produced by: Camper Van Beethoven (?)

The surprise hit off of Telephone Free Landslide Victory gets an after-the-fact EP.

CVB mainstay David Lowery had later expressed curiosity regarding the single picking up via radioplay, believing (at the time) other songs on the album to be better candidates, and while I can totally get on board with that – my intro was The Day That Lassie Went to the Moon, and I was hooked thereafter – Skinheads is, undeniably, a ridiculously catchy song. It succeeds as memorable maybe because of its defining nonsense lyrics being easy to sing along with, as well as maybe the more ultimate sing-along-with requisite: a chorus. CVB tracks have choruses, of course, but Skinheads is begging for the crowd (and you, in your car) to single along. Isolating this track on the single’s A-side makes sense given runtimes, but it’s also an interesting decision to kind of prop this up as it’s own thing, relegating the B-side to “other.”

…Though they aren’t. The B-side tracks are arguably stranger, with the trippy Cowboys From Hollywood (later on II & III) mostly just that phrase repeated as manic gang vocals over a kind of pokey jam, and closer’s Colonel Enrique Adolfo Bermudez masked babblings over klezmer bomp avoidant of either chorus or discernible lyrics, but these tracks also essentially follow the same ska / folk mish-mash of Skinheads, and the majority of Telephone Free; they are wholly in-line with the style, and the same mentality that wrote Skinheads’ nonsense phrases. Instrumental Atkuda does the same, with the “epigrams” simply slight atmospheric interstitials.

But to be clear: all of these tracks are also great, and by narrowing down to a few selections, it avoids the inherent limitation of the original source album of feeling like there’s potential for more, as this release is only intended to give you that single you wanted, plus some backups. And it does exactly that.

Later included on the TFLS rerelease.