Search - Rollerskate Skinny :: Horsedrawn Wishes

Total genius

Man Under Glass | Dublin | 04/04/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"That's how i'd describe this album, plain and simple. How this album is always overlooked (it was only voted 14th in the greatest Irish albums of all time in 2005) simply astounds me. Huge walls of layered guitar, fantastic drumming, effects, samples...brilliant. If every band in the world sounded like Rollerskate Skinny, the world would be a better place.



Also buy Dead City Sunbeams by Kid Silver (Ken Griffen) and Kindness by The Radio (Stevie M).



I think Ken's in a band now in New York called "Favourite Sons". And i'd say they're brilliant too."

Smoke damage

C. L. White | Minneapolis, MN | 05/24/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Horsedrawn Wishes is one of my favorite albums of all time. That said, when I first listened to it, I hated it. I kind of heard it as a mix of other pop and progressive excesses that I distrusted.



Gradually I understood Horsedrawn Wishes as a collection of impressions. This music is the closest you will come to a voice inside your head, recycling all kinds of found motifs, riffs, harmonies, sounds and swirling chaos into something that's referential without being clever, except in the way that the subconscious is clever - punning stupidly but with hidden import and intimacy. There is so much tension and so little resolution on this record. Everything just keeps winding up. When the resolution comes, it crashes down on you like crying your eyes out.



The only problem with this record is that the production is a little bit muddy. In a perfect world, this record would get remastered and rereleased. In this world, you can still find it in cutouts for a few dollars. That's a pretty good situation for the poor music fan, not so good for Ken Griffen, whose marvelous Kid Silver suffered a similar fate."