This Can't Be Today: A Brief Review Of The New Reissue Of Emergency Third Rail Power Trip By The Rain Parade

Back in the mid-Eighties, as acts as disparate as The Replacements and The Bangles were looking back to Alex Chilton for inspiration, and Husker Du were busy covering The Byrds, a West Coast scene was expanding (and expanding minds) in similar Sixties-inspired style. Dubbed the Paisley Underground, the term covered the music being made by The Bangles, The Dream Syndicate, The Three O'Clock, and The Rain Parade. Their debut album, the seminal Emergency Third Rail Power Trip, has just been reissued yet again. As always, the album sounds better than ever each time it's played, and certainly so in this remastered 2024 edition.

While Steven and David Roback (Opal, Mazzy Star) clearly were vibing with The Byrds when they made this debut album from The Rain Parade, they also made the most psychedelic record of that whole Paisley Underground scene. More lyrical, and downright trippy than efforts from other groups, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip is full of chiming guitars, stretches of melodic experimentation, and vocals which seem like they are coming in from light years away. That the tunes are all uniformly solid is another reason this is a classic album. "Talking in my Sleep" and "I Look Around" retain a classic graceful sense of song construction, even as something like "Carolyn's Song" rivals numbers from The Velvet Underground and Nico for icy appeal; it makes perfect sense that This Mortal Coil covered this one later, you know? And while Emergency Third Rail Power Trip is full of familiar pleasures, it's likely never sounded brighter than it does now on this 2024 iteration. The sound captured in this version through the remastering by Jim Hill is significantly warm and rich.

What makes this edition of Emergency Third Rail Power Trip even more enticing is the second disc of rarities. It's on these early demos and live recordings that Rain Parade's unique genius is further revealed. A demo of "Look at Merri" is, frankly, better than the album version, offering up a spaced-out vibe that is a few decades ahead of its time, while other four-track versions of staples like "I Look Around" are more obviously straightforward Byrds-y here than one might expect. Still, it's a nice surprise to hear the tunes sound this much like they were actually recorded in the Sixties. A smattering of live cuts -- including a gnarly run at "No Good Trying" by Syd Barrett -- also seals the deal for making this version of Emergency Third Rail Power Trip the fullest portrait of The Rain Parade in this era we've had on offer to date.

Of course The Rain Parade never stopped, really. The band's got a new single "Surprise, Surprise", and recently offered an album in 2023. What they had in 1983 can never be recreated, I think, but the spark there can continue to be fired. The music is timeless, even with its obvious debts owed to Sixties-era pioneers. The Rain Parade entirely bucked the trends of their time, looked to the past, and made something that continues to be wildly influential. If ever there was a seminal American college rock album, 1983's Emergency Third Rail Power Trip is it. Dig this new version and marvel again at how wonderful this moment in time was.

Emergency Third Rail Power Trip by Rain Parade is out now via Label 51 Recordings.

More details on Rain Parade via the official website.

[Photos: Top by David Arnoff, bottom by Billy Douglas]