Customer Reviews

Amazing Undersea Adventures of Aqua Kitty

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I discovered this band when seeing them open up for a local favorite of mine back in the mid-90's. My jaw dropped from the moment they took the stage. Afterwards, a friend of mine tried to track down this nerdy Rob Crow frontman. He found him in a dark corner of the closed game-arcade playing pinball all alone. He was kind enough to give my friend his autograph.
For anyone who enjoys Pinback - this would truly be money well-spent. Heavy Vegetable was, I believe, Rob Crow's first band. While much more Math-Rocky than pinback's material, you can still find the unmistakably quirky & innovative, not to mention CATCHY, endearing qualities that have drawn so many as of late to this highly underrated artist's material.
This is not to take away from Rob's new sidekick's influences. For you'll find, with HV's style, a much more sloppy and whimsical take on Rob's vision - while pinback is MUCH more ironed out, both sonically & structure-wise. But good good good!!
"The amazing adventures...," HV's first album, is more preferable to me than "Frisbee," but that's still a tough distinction to make. I just happen to like it because the song's cohere better as a strong "album". Frisbee has just as much quality - but seemed a little more rushed of an undertaking. Like they just slapped a whole lot of good stuff together because they couldn't keep up with Rob's tremendous output. And it is just that -- TREMENDOUS. I would say that, before this guy dies, he will have blessed us with over 500, if not 1,000 songs. He's the Willy Wonka of the underground.

This was most people outside of San Diego's first taste of Rob Crow, the genius who has gone on to Thingy, Pinback, Optiganally Yours, Fantasy Mission Force and Physics. He has the most innovative songs and the best voice in modern music. His main influences seem to be Fugazi and Wesley Willis but you can definatley hear some pop in there as well. My reccommendation is you buy anything he has to do with, his name is like a good housekeeping seal on your record so you know it has to be good.

Just getting into Pinback? Heard that Rob Crow may have had a couple of projects on his past resume that might be worth listening to? Well, you could say that's an understatement. Simply put, Crow's Heavy Vegetable (as well as Thingy, which is basically HV v.2.0) albums are unabashed eclectic and energetic godsends, and in this longtime listener's perspective, vastly superior to the eventuality of the Pinback output (however, this is not to imply that Pinback is to be avoided). Do yourself a favor and procure everything you can get your hands on associated with Rob Crow, and sort it out for yourself. Start here.

This was most people outside of San Diego's first taste of Rob Crow, the genius who has gone on to Thingy, Pinback, Optiganally Yours, Fantasy Mission Force and Physics. He has the most innovative songs and the best voice in modern music. His main influences seem to be Fugazi and Wesley Willis but you can definatley hear some pop in there as well. My reccommendation is you buy anything he has to do with, his name is like a good housekeeping seal on your record so you know it has to be good.

This is the best music I have ever listened to in my entire life. It's kind of the top for rock music. This record has been done by some genius under the name of Heavy Vegetable. The sound, the songs and the differents feelings that come from it... amazing. Buy it with 'Frisbie', you won't regret it. I did'nt know that I would never find something better than Heavy Vegetable when I first got it in 1996.

Aqua Kitty was a hard album for me to get into. And this is coming from someone who has listened to a good bit of Pinback, Rob Crowe's latest band. I think my struggle came from the lyric sheet. The lyrics seemed poor at first blush when compared to the music. After a few more listens I see them as necessity. For Crowe to get to the point where he is now, artful and minimal, he had to start from a really exposed and artless perspective. Don't get me wrong, these song are not so much childish but childlike. These are songs children would write if they could play really tight and moody indie rock. When I say moody I mean bipolar as all get out. You get downcast folk rock bits next to hardcore numbers that are as bruised as the punk tracks from Husker Du's Zen Arcade.Yet it somehow works as a whole and is not as much a mopefest as this may make it out to be. There is a really naive energy underscoring it all. I don't think I would have liked this as much as I do now had I gotten it when it first came out. If you aren't too old to like indie enthusiasm over percise expression, you will enjoy it. Not a good starting point but inevitable if you like Pinback or any Rob Crowe stuff. If you enjoy this let me point you to a more refined version of this sound, "To The Innocent" from Thingy.