VA – Strum & Thrum: The American Jangle Underground 1983​-​1987 (2020)

I’ve been unable to get out of this record for two days! Since the Malice He passed me his tape yesterday during a virtual conversation on the blue network, I just can’t take my ears off Strum & Thrum: The American Jangle Underground 1983​-​1987first compilation in a series called Excavations released by Captured Tracks in 2020.

As the name explains, on the album the New York label compiled a considerable slice of artists from the B-side of the US jangle/indie scene of the 80s, where ‘bigger’ bands like REM and Rain Parade, among others, came from. In an exquisite work of mining inspired by similar labels like Soul Jazz and Numero Group, CT gathered no less than 28 groups (almost) completely unknown from the Yankee rock underworld to, obviously, give me hours of work researching each one of them hahahaha.

Of all the bands present in Strum & Thrum I only knew – from reading something about – the girls from Salem 66 and I soon fell in love with the Crippled Pilgrims (which Renato told me were known. Only by him, of course lol), but as said in the paragraph above, this collection will earn me a lot of time digging the Captured Tracks dig, because there’s a lot of absolutely shit in it, including the first musical adventure by dear Linda Hopper of Magnapop called Holiday, where she played with Lynda Stipe, sister of a certain Michael Stipe so important to alternative rock…

Anyway (FUCKING, HOW DO I USE THAT WORD AT THE END OF TEXTS), if you belong to the diggers club, I wish you a good trip through this lost world unearthed by Mike Snipe and co.; if you just want 1h30 of sensational ‘old new music’, I also wish you a good trip, because that’s exactly what you’ll get when you press play below. Congratulations, thank you and long life to Captured Tracks🇧🇷 And Thank you, Malizia. You are fuck ❤️!

Essential!