Tight And Loose is an artifact of a time before San Francisco became a bedroom community for the tech empires. Back in the late 1980s, it was still possible for people living there to work in record stores and other non-advancement enterprises to invest their time in creative endeavors that mocked the notion of redeeming values. World Of Pooh was one such endeavor.
The band comprised Barbara Manning (voice, guitar, bass), Brandan Kearney (voice, guitar) and Jay Paget (drums). While it was considerably closer to conventional rock ’n’ roll than many of the other combos its members played in (Caroliner, Archipeligo Brewing Co., Glands Of External Secretion), World Of Pooh was no one’s ladder for pop success. Therein lies some of the trio’s appeal. World Of Pooh never tried to clean up its ragged edges, preferring to rattle and clatter like a cross between late-1970s editions of the Urinals and the Fall.
Tight And Loose collects the band’s two singles and some compilation tracks, plus several songs that were recorded for World Of Pooh’s never-completed second album. Manning would subsequently re-record some of the latter for her solo albums, but the white-knuckled urgency of the versions of “Someone Wants You Dead” and “Straw Man” heard here eclipse the later ones.
In cleaner hands, Kearney compositions like “Squirm Test” and “G.H.M.” could’ve been pop/punk pogo fodder, but WOP did them with a combination of blurry speed and lyrical inscrutability that’ll make close listeners pause and ask what they just heard. When World Of Pooh covered songs by the Carpenters, 100 Flowers and Blue Öyster Cult, contours of unhealthy preoccupations flexed just under the surface.
Beautifully packaged in a cover that blows up one of those EPs, Tight And Loose includes an insert with wry commentary about each tune by Manning and Kearney, as well as photos documenting what ne’er-do-wells they were. [Bulbous Monocle]
—Bill Meyer
