The Vulgar Boatmen are an archetypal cult band. Those of us who love them really, really love them, but the three albums the Indiana/Florida band released between 1989 and 1995 never reached a wide audience. So, the reissue of debut You And Your Sister, bolstered by a pair of new remixes and three previously unreleased tracks, is a gift. Dale Lawrence and Robert Ray wrote strummy, propulsive tunes that could recall Good Earth-era Feelies, the Velvet Underground or Stax/Volt soul. The band will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new Q&A with Lawrence.
Lawrence: Digging deeply into Roger Miller‘s catalog a couple of years ago, I was struck by how much his early songs resemble some of the better-known material from The Basement Tapes. “Dang Me,” “Lou’s Got The Flu” and “My Uncle Used To Love Me But She Died” would feel right at home alongside “Lo And Behold,” “Don’t You Tell Henry,” and “Yea! Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread.” All are built around choruses with no obvious connection to the verses preceding them, and all share a strikingly similar absurdist humor, a maniacal (and sloshed) embrace of nonsense. It takes little effort to imagine a world where Dylan might have written “My Uncle Used To Love Me” or Miller “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.”
Video after the jump.
