4 out of 5

Label: Independent Project Records

Produced by: Camper Van Beethoven (?)

I’d say I experienced my intro to Camper Van Beethoven the way you’re supposed to: passed on to me on a cassette mixtape by a cousin who was an aging punk rocker. This is… very fitting. Mix cassettes were still a thing at my age, but there was still something kind of out of time and place about the whole setup, and while admittedly rolling my eyes at some of the expected inclusions on the tape, I had no idea who these CVB cats were, but was blown away by The Day That Lassie Went To The Moon’s alt-rock weirdness, and Border Ska’s very modern sounding (then, and now) crossover bomp. Since I was a budding indie music asshole and indirectly confirmed my friends didn’t know who this band was, the music gained even more appeal – this was outsider rock, at least to me, and I pretty immediately tracked down Telephone Free Landslide Victory thereafter.

Thankfully, those two tracks were not a lark; a from-then-on love for the band was borne.

While Camper would grow to subsume many other styles into their sound, at this point, they were college rock; they were Pavement with probably a little more weed instead of alcohol, and maybe literary instead of art degrees. Klezmer is the go-to sound for the release, which still has a left-of-center vibe to it, especially when mashed up with punkier riffing and beats, and then liberally splashed with a surfer-like Whatever, Man-ness. That latter vibe is ultimately what holds the album back: the group seems so intent on not caring that they dodge out of their own creativity at points, forcing songs into nonsense rabbit holes, and an “anything goes” style that ends up maybe overusing that core klezmer style as the de facto form of ‘anything.’

However, this is all in service of the undeniable: that every track is also ridiculously catchy. Whether doing an instrumental dirge or an aimless ditty like Where the Hell is Bill?, TFLV’s songs are – each and every one – almost instantly memorable; choruses and Lowery’s dumbass phrases sticking out for singing along. This simply doesn’t sound like a first album, even taking into account that the group’s members had been playing in other bands for a while. It’s slacker music, but not sloppy; none of the tracks, given sentience, would give one fig if you’re listening, but they’re all honed to be singles. The opening run of tracks, sifting through ska and rock and stoner jams, are kind of a mic drop: CVB play silly music, seriously, ready to cover Black Flag and then shrug it off with a folky polka soon after.

The later reissue with extra tracks helps to flesh out the kind of self-defeating emotional palette of the album, making that the “ultimate” way to listen to this, but I’m nonetheless astounded, every time, by the original set, and how un-dated it ends up sounding. Later CVB discs were successfully more nuanced and thus better in some ways, but everything that follows can also be said to stem from Telephone Free’s allowance for that kind of exploration, even if the group was intent on ditching class instead of finishing their thesis at this point.