3 out of 5

Label: Mississippi Records

Produced by: Michael Hendrickson (recorded by)

This is quite unexpected, as a Fuck-adjacent project (includes Geoff Soule; appeared on the Sad Horse appeared on the supermegacorporation label) and led by Elizabeth Venable, whose work I know to be of the tweaked pop crowd, which is very much in the Fuck school.

And not that Fuck hasn’t rocked on many occasions, but Sad Horse is, like, punk? Not necessarily snotty-nosed, raging riffage punk, but the clean guitar sound gives it an old school Chuck Berry vibe, and the fast-paced, off-the-cuff stomp of the tunes definitely feels like punk.

…Also punkish, though, is that the compositions don’t vary much, and I’m not even sure we’re getting to three chords – it’s just like a boogie-woogie played vast, with Venable shout-singing atop. It all seems like fun, and it’s definitely short and sweet, but excepting a bit more of a nuanced start to B-side’s Veins, you can just barely understand the shouted choruses here, and are otherwise just happy to be swept up in the enthusiasm of at all, but probably also for the best that it’s over in a few minutes.