Search - Ashtabula :: Possible Smokestacks

Who needs Strapping Fieldhands with friends like this?

George T. Parsons | Nevada City, CA | 06/19/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Ashtabula Possible Smokestacks (Siltbreeze) Been awhile since the last Strapping Fieldhands picnic, and though the first sidetrip by S.F. vocal brainiac Bob Malloy with Ashtabula was more like testing the waters in a jamjar, this one is a much more songadelic hoedown. Still some Barrett-cracked angularity, but just another aspect of Bob and company's vertigo au-go-go with many flecks that glitter like Guided By Voices sinking in gluey pools of novacaine flavored quicksand signifying 70's-rock hand gestures to a massed crowd of dumbfounded gremlins, while squeezing out Bobbo's most "populist" producto of his careening career. Still walking into the room backwards, hatsize like Pere Ubu's but more nasty, cheap, drunk and fun. Stoned party soundtrack for the acrobatic ironic with a rubbery cartoony sense of humor. Several gnomes in a boat, drunk rum-runners lost at sea, all dressed up as Popeye and swatting flies the size of planets with a long belt of flat paper stars."