4 out of 5

Label: Lost Sounds Montana

Produced by: Dave Martens (curation / production)

I’m guessing that, unless you were one of the folks who grew up knowing these Montana punksters, you’re coming to this compilation as I did – following a Silkworm connection (both an old SKWM and Ein Heit song appearing here) – or maybe because of the strong Steve Albini or Pearl Jam connections, the former appearing in / producing a handful of this, and the latter’s Jeff Ament’s Deranged Diction featured twice. Your reception to the 24 tracks gathered here are obviously going to vary, but I’d focus on a couple of the main tags mentioned in the subtitle as a reference point, bearing in mind the mainly 80s era it covers: postpunk and new wave. While the whole subtitle is accurate, as we definitely touch on straight forward punk and a dash of hardcore – perhaps specifically represented by Deranged Decision’s throaty, rough-edged rock – the majority falls into those other camps, flopping between a lot of Devo and Talking Heads vibes, and the early jangle that defined the early indies scene that, to me, became typified by Matador’s 90s releases.

I’m not nearly schooled enough to make proper comparisons, which is partially because… that’s not really a genre / era of music that appeals to me. And yet, I enjoyed this compilation a lot more than expected, enough to make it more than a passing “listen once” kinda deal, and then bumped over the edge by a clearly passionate group of people putting this stuff together and writing the liner notes.

Recording quality varies as these are often cassette / 7″ only things, or live shows, but the mastering is consistent, and prevents extreme volume ups and downs that are common for archival collections. Lyrics are sometimes silly, and more frequently kind of generic – these were often very young kids, cycling between projects, just playing their hearts out and / or gettin’ all artsy fartsy with it – but what sold me on this, besides some truly fun tunes, was the rawness of it. It’s kind of a bummer that this might be our only opportunity to hear some of these bands, but the “recorded once in someone’s basement and never again” feeling runs strong throughout; you believe the liner notes’ protestation that Montana was a legit, overlooked scene.

As to the tunes themselves, I’ve made some references above. If those don’t appeal, I’d add that only a small handful of the songs here truly felt straight-forward; everyone otherwise brings a wrinkle that makes them not Devo or Talking Heads or someone else, and I definitely came away with a few bands to follow up on.

…Which does bring us to another criticism: while the liner notes are very dense, giving us a couple essays on the scene, and long breakdowns on every single band, some of the writing is very hard to follow – lots of exclamation points! and sentences that don’t quite form coherent points – and there’s a kind of inside baseball mentality to discussing the scene, like the author sometimes forgets we maybe don’t know Montana, or who all these cats are / were. It’s also a bit disappointing that it doesn’t feel consistently clarified where these tracks came from – if they were released or not. At the same time, all of that kind of feeds into a DIY vibe that’s appropriate for the collection.

So, as a bandcamp commentor much more succinctly put it, and I’ll paraphrase: come for whatever band / person drew you in, and stay to be surprised by the rest. I cannot underline how much this is not my style of music, and beyond just appreciating the concept and passion behind the project, I’m super happy with the actual contents as well.