Hot Knives - Hot Knives This one almost seems to have been calling out for a Raven review. The band, containing two former members of The Flaming Groovies, recorded the pieces gathered here in the late 70's but the album that was meant to be never materialized. Its since been
issued on CD (Grown Up Wrong Records) but is now seeing its first vinyl treatment via the Big Star name checking Got Kinda Lost records curated by Ugly Things Magazine's Jeremy Cargill. Aside from two singles (which were hailed with great anticipation by Bomp! Magazine at the time) none of the other songs were formally released at the time of their recording. Likely its due to the fact that the band was a bit out of step with what was happening in San Francisco at the tail end of the 70's. The record is packed with jangled, Byrdsian pop that melds male-female vocals into a breezy folk-pop mix that would have fight right in a decade previous in the same geographic region. However, as seems to be with elusive records, the fact that this never saw release only built its reputation greater among collectors of this type of crystalline pop perfection. In amongst the originals are a handful of deft and appropriate covers (Moby Grape, The Knickerbockers) and the latter proves that even they were crate digging a bit at the time. So it ends up a cycle of collectors digging collectors. This seems only fitting to end up on a new label celebrating the weird missteps between proto-punk, jangle-pop and power pop and well worth some time on the table. Listen: Support the artist. Buy it HERE