Sun City Girls: You're Never Alone with a Cigarette
By
Evan Sawdey 22 April 2008PopMatters Interviews Editor
The press release for You’re Never Alone With a Cigarette uses the term “ethno freakout”—and it couldn’t be more appropriate. For the uninitiated, the Sun City Girls are a splatter-rock band, best-known for its Mothers of Invention-affected avant-jams, best exhibited on their 1990 album Torch of the Mystics. Following the death of drummer Charlie Gocher last year, the band—under their own Abduction label—decided to revisit the past with this collection of demos and rarities from the Mystics sessions. Unfortunately for the band, there was a reason why these songs didn’t make the original recording: with sprawling, directionless 12-minute epics (“The Fine-Tuned Machines of Lemuria”) and jam sessions where it seems that every musician is doing their own thing without regard to the others (“Plaster Cupids Falling From the Ceiling”), Cigarette is a grating, difficult listening experience. Unsurprisingly, the songs that actually have structures (“Wild World of Animals”, “The Beauty of Benghazi”) prove to the best showcases for the bands fantastic instrumental ability. The rest? Worth leaving Alone.
Evan Sawdey began contributing to PopMatters in late 2005 after contributing for years to his college newspaper
The Knox Student. Evan became the Associate Interviews Editor for PopMatters in the summer of 2008, and then the full Interviews Editor a year after that. Since joining, Evan's work has been quoted/featured in a wide array of publications including SLUG Magazine, The Metro (U.K.), the Gulf Times, Soundvenue Magazine (Denmark), and multiple national newspapers. Evan has been a guest on WNYC's Soundcheck (an NPR affiliate), was the Executive Producer for the
Good With Words: A Tribute to Benjamin Durdle album (available for free at
GoodWithWordsAlbum.com), and wrote the liner notes for the 2011 re-release of
Andre Cymone's hit 1985 album A.C. (Big Break Records) and the 2012 re-releases of
the JoBoxers' 1983 debut album Like Gangbusters,
'Til Tuesday's 1985 debut Voices Carry, and
Plastic Bertrand's 1978 album AN 1 (all Hot Shot Records). He is a current member of The Recording Academy and resides in Chicago, Illinois. You can follow him
@SawdEye should you be so inclined.
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