CD Review: Wednesday Week "What We Had" (Noble Rot)
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The Los Angeles-bred Wednesday Week debuted alongside the Paisley
Underground on the early '80s compilations "The Radio Tokyo Tapes" and
"Warf Rat Tales," but their sound had more to do with minimalist pop
(ala Oh-Ok) and new wave indie rock (ala The Neats) than the
flowering, droning and buzzing neo-psych. What linked them to their
SoCal contemporaries was a DIY garage sensibility which flowered in an
initial batch of songs that were written and sung with the emphatic,
confessional tone of diary entries.
This CD reissue augments the group's 1987 full-length LP for Enigma
("What We Had") with their earlier 1983 EP for Warf Rat ("Betsy's
House"), and five selections from both before and after the album.
Programmed in chronological order (14-18, 21, 20, 22, 1-13, 23), you
can hear the band evolve from DIY roots ("I Hate Lying to Mom") to
frenetic, angular post-punk ("I Don't Know") to Byrdsian/REM-styled
chime ("Christmas Here" and "You Wanted Me To Hang Around"), to rock
("The Leopard") electric-folk ("Also Clear"), and finally to the
heavier, big-drum sound of the LP.
Produced by Don Dixon (REM, Chris Stamey, Windbreakers), the album
tracks are thicker, more polished and ultimately more generic than the
earlier and later sides produced by Vitus Matare, Ethan James and
Earle Mankey. Several album tracks sound quite like Holly & The
Italians or Bonnie Hayes & The Wild Combo, particularly in the vocals.
But even as the group moved away from the sparseness of their first
EP, Kristi and Kelly Callan's lyrics retained the intimate personality
lost in major label contracts (and subsequent video shoots) by
contemporaries like The Bangles.
Kristi Callan's chameleon vocals can reaqlly be heard on two of the
bonus tracks. 1983's terrific version of Gary Valentine's "You Wanted
Me To Hang Around" (from the "Girls Can't Help It" compilation) sounds
remarkably like early Olivia Newton-John, and 1990's "No Going Back"
channels Susan Jacks of the Poppy Family. Though this CD isn't a
complete band discography (there are numerous EP and compilation album
tracks missing), this is a superb overview of Wednesday Week's core
catalog, and a welcome reintroduction to one of the lesser known indie
bands of the L.A.'s mid-80s. [(c)2008 redtunictroll at hotmail dot com]