Details:

Artist: The Connells
Album: Old-School Dropouts
Genre: Rock
Label: Black Park Records
Language: English
Release Date: November 6, 2001
Number of Tracks: 11
Total Length: 00:40:14
Total Size: 95.83 MB
Format: MPEG 1 Layer III (mp3), Stereo
Quality: 320 KBPS, 44 KHz, CBR
Webstore: http://www.amazon.com/Old-School-Dropouts-Connells/dp/B00005Y7F0

Narratives:

A two-year-old release I finally got around to picking up a few months back, I mention it here just by way of a sad commentary on everything that's wrong with the modern corporate music business. The Connells were one of the finest and most painfully overlooked bands of the late 80's and 90's. With a jangly Southern pop song akin to R.E.M., and an even greater sense of simple popsmithery, there is simply no rational explanation for the failure of this band to garner significant radio attention. I've played them for friends and family of every musical stripe, and nobody's found them anything short of charming. But years of commercial ignorance took their toll. The band got dropped from their label, and finally called it quits a couple years ago, but managed to squeeze out one last album on a no-name indie label. It's clearly a no-budget affair. There's a major typo on the back cover, resulting in all the track numbers being incorrect. More significantly, the production (at least on a few tracks) is the pits -- this may be the worst-sounding album outside of mid-period Guided by Voices. (Of course, as someone who would rather listen to a band's demos than an overly-polished mainstream rock album, I don't find it hard to get past this.) But even poor production can't hide the merits of a beautiful, infectious pop song, and this album's full of them. Maybe not as unforgettable as early albums like Boylan Heights, but surely as good as their prior album, 1998's Still Life. You see bands like the Connells die an ugly death (and other fantastic 90's acts like Luna, Bettie Serveert, Wilco, etc. dropped by their labels), and you can't help but be disheartened by the sad state of the rock & roll industry. Buy this, hum along, and maybe feel just a little bit better.

Track Listing:

01. Bust   (03:07), 7.47 MB
02. Gladiator Heart   (04:28), 10.56 MB
03. Back in Blighty   (04:06), 9.73 MB
04. Radio   (04:06), 9.71 MB
05. Put Down   (03:59), 9.45 MB
06. Airlift   (03:04), 7.37 MB
07. All the Time in the World  (03:18), 7.90 MB
08. Rusted Fields   (04:41), 11.07 MB
09. Hello Walter   (03:35), 8.55 MB
10. Washington   (03:49), 9.07 MB
11. The Bottom   (02:01), 4.95 MB