4 out of 5

Label: self-released

Produced by: ?

A massive, retrospective slab of People Like Us that somehow doesn’t even fully cover their eclecticism, but also does a great job of showing off and linking together the various phases Vicki Bennett’s project has moved through.

Sequenced chronologically, the 37 tracks of Sharity! give us the template of samples and songs chopped up into semblances of beats, and though sticking to this dated order, the tracks have been rather excellently selected to flow into one another. While the patchwork nature of PLU maybe makes this “easier,” that doesn’t mean there’s not some needed consideration to maintaining a vibe and pace: things may lean into humorous and easygoing, but there’s also a reason PLU has dropped so much material over the years – Vicki’s creativity knows no bounds, and she’s continued to poke at how to expresses that in various offshoots of that humorous and easygoing base, never resting on a set template. Combined with the more fascinating topdown view of how Bennett’s composition style has evolved – going from analog noise and beat cut-ups (late 90s) to goofier quick-cuts (early 00s), to testing the waters with electronic manipulations (mid 00s), to a kind of crossroads of these things (late 00s, early 2010s), to a semi current phase of song mash-ups – the accomplishment of Sharity listening like a legit album and not a compilation is wildly impressive.

By dint of these phases and the selections, there’s perhaps one bit of slowdown with some longer tracks during the transition period where Bennett was figuring out how to involve digital stuff in her work (this is the early 00s; tracks like Gongexeva). Things become arguably ambient at certain points, moving away from a core musicality. But the eras are evenly divided, and there’s plenty of music thereafter to pick the pace back up.

While I don’t think of PLU as a “if you could only own one album…” band, Sharity! is, perhaps, a good place to start for getting a mega-dose of how continually inventive and fun and silly – but also occasionally emotive – the band can be.