Loose Fur - Born Again in teh USA

Thanks for that.

Don't think I'd realised that it referenced Springsteen AND fundamentalist Christianity.

Oh, because fundamentalist Christians are "born again," and Springsteen had that "Born in the USA" album.

Huh.

I haven't listened to Born Again in the U.S.A. much, but I liked the first Loose Fur album quite a bit. It feels both more experimental and much more off-the-cuff and therefore less pretentious than the Wilco albums from the same period.

Born Again is nice, but is pretty much a straight indie rock record, albeit a bit more fun than you'dnormally get from Wilco over the last decade. The first one, though, is really quite different; the grooves and drone-y arrangements are awesome. Whatshisface is an awesome drummer.

You Were Wrong is also really, really beautiful.

Born Again is straight indie rock in the sense I don't listen to it much. but better than your average indie rock because singers have better vocals (imo) and the folk-rock aspect isn't diluted by having much more folk than rock. But yeah, I still don't find myself listening to this album much.

Mizzell, which O'Rourke sung song do you think sucks? hopefully not 8) Thou Shalt Wilt because the music "sounds like sesame street" (amazon reviewer). That's one of the more redeeming songs on the album.

I remember I downloaded Loose Fur doing a T.Rex cover once.. it was alright, bad sound quality.

It takes a while to follow all the twists and turns in some of the more proggier songs - but they're proggy in a very compact way - no noodling - they tend to have lots of different sections that don't repeat, the songs are short, and they sound deceptively straightforward, due to the clean '70s rock sound and the simple riffs. You hear echoes of lots of great '70s bands on here (Steely Dan, Cheap Trick), but yet it sounds vital - it's not some stale museum piece - an example of re-imagining the tradition.

This is so OTM. "Apostolic" in particular is a perfect piece of micro-prog.

I just revisited this album after several years, mainly in light of O'Rourke's reveal that every sound on it except for vocals was recorded with a Shure SM57 mic, just because he wanted to see how it would sound. And it sounds lovely--warm and cozy but it still rocks. And I love Kotche's vibraphone ornaments throughout. Apparently there's a third album in the can. Hope it comes out someday.