Tuesday, March 20, 2018

This Reminds Me: Songs by Linda Smith Reimagined



Various Artists
This Reminds Me: Songs by Linda Smith Reimagined       
Lost Sound Tapes / 2018

In the relatively calm decade of the 1990s, I was listening to all of the indie / hometaped music I could uncover, like a lost man parched in the desert, searching for a phone booth. Pre-internet, all I had for a road map were the monthly mailout catalogues from Parasol Records. I bought many a record sight unseen, solely by intuition and Parasol’s one-line descriptions. Discovering music from Orange Cake Mix made this guessing game worthwhile, as well as buying my first Linda Smith 7” record. Her songs were a bundle of poetic dichotomies, like peering into a handwritten diary of someone figuring out the nuances of life. This Reminds Me: Songs by Linda Smith Reimagined is long overdue recognition of her brilliance as a musician & songwriter. Lost Sound Tapes has assembled a nineteen-song tribute featuring bands as luminous as Silly Pillows & musicians like Rose Melberg, Peter Kirsch, & Paula Strong. The one minor flaw in this collection is a lack of mixtape choreography: the songs are arranged alphabetically rather than by musical flow. Let’s hope there is a second compilation in the works – you can’t have too much of a good thing.


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