2023 press clippings
Falling Stairs: Life is a Kick Trial: 1988-1993
Some lost albums should stay lost. Others you’re excited they were found, like uncovered time capsules discovered in attics or basements.
I’m pretty sure I caught this Flushing, Queens’ four fronted by superlative singer/guitarist Charles McEnerney with three Johns (not the Three Johns), McGrath, McLoughlin, and Rice, some enchanted evening at CBGB or Pyramid Club after their lone, 1988 That And a Quarter EP, and noted their obvious get up and go—but they didn’t last.
Now, that EP’s six songs are augmented by six even hotter unreleased ones, proving their cessation was a shame. If you take the faster jump and jangle of 1981-1986 R.E.M. and Libertines U.S., plus The Embarrassment, Crippled Pilgrims, Hoodoo Gurus (and other, lesser known Aussies), of that time, with similar electric playing and songwriting acumen, you’d have the hot buzz of the heretofore unheard “Daylight” and “Gone”—with thickened guitars like that era’s Forever Since Breakfast neophytes, GBV.
Whomever preserved and baked these tapes did us a service.
—Neal Agneta, The Big Takeover, Brooklyn, New York, Winter 2023 issue