Superdrag Album Recommendations: "The Fabulous 8-Track Sound of Superdrag"

Album Recommendations: The Fabulous 8-Track Sound of S...

The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Superdrag

[#] The Fabulous 8-Track Sound of Superdrag (1995)

A grubby little gas that'll get you high.

Reviewed January 6, 2024

The Fabulous 8-Track Sound of Superdrag album art

"Could it be real?/I got nothing left to steal/And I'm too fucked up to feel/Give me a shot," the harmonies chime sweetly over the fuzzy, dark instrumental of The Fabulous 8-Track Sound of Superdrag's opener "Sugar". Recorded between late 1994 and early 1995 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee during the same "Bender" sessions that would demo the majority of their major label debut Regretfully Yours, Fabulous is proof positive that lo-fi doesn't have to be challenging. The guitars are grubby, the drums are thin and clicky, and the sonics are clearly not top shelf, but Superdrag's instantly likable 90s pop rock perseveres anyway in big, instantly endearing fashion. I can attest after a rather alcoholized evening spent with "Sugar" on repeat—it's good stuff.

Fabulous splits the difference between gentle verses and tight, hooky choruses with little regard for much else. Lyrically, Superdrag is at their best when they're maladaptive, so singer-guitarist John Davis is all too happy to seethe at you about bumming around high and useless on "Bloody Hell", soberly mark the end of a clingy relationship on "Really Thru", or bargain with a girl who's taken a vow of chastity to let him plug her nonetheless on "Load". If there's one issue with the goods here, it's that the bummer run of "Liquor" through "6/8" has a great way of killing the pacing of the EP—like an evening spent dousing yourself in Captain Morgan, though, that's perhaps the point.