4 out of 5

Label: Homestead Records

Producer: Scott Exum, Bill Day (Engineers)

Soul-Junk comes in a couple different flavors – Truman’s Water style lo-fi 30-track-per-album jams, and experimental hip-hop.  Somewhere inbetween is some skronk.  1952 is definitely the best of the former most of these styles, as it finds enough variation to keep you going through the whole album and strips off the rougher edges inherent in that style to get to some focused jams.  The “let me straight up quote the Bible” is also less apparent here, making 1952 one of the more “band” feeling of all the Soul-Junk releases, instead of a clutter of bleeps or fuzzed-out noise that Glen Galaxy wanted to commit to tape.

Still, the hallmarks of the band are alive and well – regardless of the clarity, this still rings of 4-trackness (or maybe 2-trackness…), and the spirituality is there, it’s just not as invasive (or maybe you don’t notice it as much because the songs themselves are more fleshed out).  As this was sort of the pinnacle of this version of SJ before they started to incorporate hip-hop elements, it’s also some of Galaxy’s more appealing vocal work, tuneful and bouncy and confident in the stuttery flow of their songs, similar to once he grew comfortable with the stop-start of rhyming on 1958.  Lo-fi followers – think early, early Pavement without the sneer – who can tune out the jesus (or find that appealing, or don’t care) should dig this album.