Bad Manners – Loonee Tunes
welcome back to the Skaject folks! this week we’re looking at the second record from Bad Manners, Loonee Tunes.
Loonee Tunes kicks off with Echo 4-2, a cover of a theme song for a show i know nothing about. p good instrumental track. Just A Feeling was my top track last time listening to this, and it keeps that spot. extremely fun. El Pussycat is a cover of a track by Roland Alphonso, who was a Skatalites member. im not a huge fan of this one, though the instrumental break her is great. im less a fan of Doris, tbh. not bad, but not really for me. Spy-I was one i enjoyed prior, but its just fine for me now. Tequila is a cover of The Champs song, and its a very good cover at that. real nice. Lorraine’s weird but brings a fun energy that i dig a lot. Echo Gone Wrong is a dubbier track – this one’s grown on me in the intervening years. Suicide is a kinda grim track but it is undeniably catchy, tbh. The Undersea Adventures of Ivor the Engine is a fucking bop first and a weird song about a boat second. we stan. Back in ’60 is a strange, kinda rockabilly track but in a way that really doesnt work here. my last experience with the record found the placement here kinda odd, and that feeling has not changed much. Just Pretendin’ is a weird, jazzy kinda track. neat closer.
faves – Echo 4-2, Just a Feeling, Tequila, Lorraine, Suicide, The Undersea Adventures of Ivor the Engine
dislikes
yeah this is also good record, which surprised me a bit as i had the memory that Bad Manners was kinda a rough trip last time through. i suspect looking back at my notes that i had run across poor quality recordings as im not encountering the same issues and the songs i dont love arent as grating. the songs i do love have a really fun energy to them. i enjoyed the higher density of original work here, but the thing that holds the record back for me is the sequencing of tracks. not that there’s any sort of clean thematic throughline that falls apart, just that the energy of the record kinda stops and starts in places, most egregiously at the tail end. still, a nice collection of tracks.
Loonee Tunes – 7/10
next up, it’s The Selector’s Celebrate the Bullet, our first 1981 record!
previous: I Just Can’t Stop It | next: Celebrate the Bullet
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