4 out of 5

Label: supermegacorporation

Produced by: Wall Drug (?)

All I can find of Wall Drug online is a 6-song cassette rip and a listing of, I assume, every song they released across other small-print cassettes and comps. But then I remember the waybackmachine, and find what should’ve been the obvious conclusion: this was a supermegacorporation CDr release that they also offered as a download, with SMC being for Fuck-related bands, and Wall Drug having included Tim Prudhomme. (And Mark Ibold of Pavement, so it’s odd that this isn’t floating around out there more availably.) It’s a compilation, and it looks like that other link was pretty thorough: 18 tracks is all she wrote, and they’re all included here.

I would say this brand of loose, non-music improv is generally a challenge to hold my attention for very long, but Wall Drug’s take on the concept is oddly addictive: a cross between the experimentalism of Rake and the nonsense of Feller Filler, the majority of the music lands on a combo of guitar and drums (and other sounds) that skirts the edge of musicality. Nothing on here truly resembles a song, but unlike much in the more outre version of this scene, the band seems to keep a core riff or tone in mind for their songs, and also cut right to it – that’s an odd amount of focus for something so wandering.

To draw a somewhat clearer line around the sound, Rake’s musings tend towards caustic or silly; Thinking Fellers’ filler is very open-ended; Wall Drug almost slip into drone on some tracks, with a slow beat and plucked instruments, or somewhere closer to noise, focusing on a repeated riff or sound, but they key is framing it all as pop or rock: by sticking to guitar, bass, and drums, there’s an appreciative simplicity that allows the melody to come forth and stick in your head. It’s so subtle, that you’re ready to turn it off, figuring the music for nothing much, but then you let it play, realizing you’ve been bobbing your head. It sinks in.

Since this was presumably not recorded with the most ideal equipment, the production can be pretty tinny, but still rings out with some low-end weight and tonal warmth at points. And we’re not totally bereft of some misfires or indulgence, where the group can’t quite settle on an engaging idea and so just hammer away for a few minutes on something more mindless seeming. I suppose that will be subjective, but there are a handful of tracks (I guess from across their whole “career,” though!) that feel skippable.

Overall, I was expecting this to be a tossable relic, since I don’t see it mentioned much in Fuck / Pavement histories. Instead, I’m hoping I can one day track down a physical copy of some of this stuff, to further secure its place in my collection.