Download: 5-Track “Blues For Horselover Fat (for PKD”)

(from Backatcha, Pod People!! available now from 5-Track)

Local singer-songwriter 5-Track [also Amanda Jo Williams’ and Cricket and the 2:19’s guitarist—ed.] sent not one, but three self-pressed copies of his album Backatcha, Pod People!! to L.A. RECORD. And like gifts from some demonic Magi, these three identical CD-Rs have caused technology to gang up on me, in an experience more terrifying than “The Monkey’s Paw” meets Maximum Overdrive. I put the first copy in my car’s CD player—it got stuck, still hasn’t come out, and now prevents ANY CD from playing, even itself! I foolishly put the second copy of Backatcha, Pod People!! in my girlfriend’s work iMac—it not only got jammed in there, but literally destroyed the operating system. I spent a large chunk of my Sunday with my girlfriend screaming at me as I tried desperately to find a manual eject trigger without the help of Google. I should have broken the last copy of Backatcha, Pod People!! over my knee, but instead I played it on a cheapo boom box that somehow managed not to implode. Objectively, the music’s not bad. It’s like Elf Power with Jimi Hendrix riffs, something akin to the Twink/Peregrin Took school of post-hippie, anti-prog science-fantasy Dylan blues, with lines like “When a spaceship coughs up cowboys and samurai/your coat is stolen by the cat with colored wings.” There’s a Daniel Johnston flavor to the vocals, especially in the childlike flare-ups of aggression around sentences like “Eat out your heart till you clean up your plate!” So it’s good—certainly promising. Just don’t play Backatcha, Pod People!! on machines you care about. I am dead serious. This CD is self-aware and will swallow your soul.

—Dan Collins