Before he was a Slumberland Records artist, Tony Molina was in OVENS. The band's output never got the attention it deserved, so the lot of it is now on a compilation called, unsurprisingly, OVENS. The Tank Crimes release is essential for anyone who loves lo-fi indie, or music that leap-frogs over another half-dozen genres.
There are 44 songs on this collection and the whole thing runs just under an hour. So I think you can guess that things go all over the place. There's wit and invention here, and plenty of riffs. "Same Shit Different Day" marries metal hooks with a Grandaddy-like sense of melody, while "Everything's the Same" and "Your Ego Will Glow" sound like Fountains of Wayne covering Van Dyke Parks. Molina's creativity is boundless here, with each cut rocketing around a few central ideas before it's over. "I Can't Hang", one of many highlights here, reminded me of bits from Bandwagonesque, and it's certainly not the only song here to sound like that. Still, OVENS is all over the place in a good way, with one track being metal-ish, another being a ballad, and another being like early GBV or something. Fans of any of the bands I've mentioned, or others like Dinosaur Jr. or They Might Be Giants (Molina sounds like that guy in that duo) should find lots and lots to get lost in here.
OVENS by OVENS is out on Friday via Tank Crimes and Bandcamp via the link below.
[Photo: ForceField PR]