The Great Plains of San Francisco

The Slats | Format: MP3 Download

Product Details

• Original Release Date: January 26, 2010
• Label: Latest Flame Records
• Copyright: 2010 The Slats/Latest Flame Records
• Total Length: 29:37
• Genres:
• ASIN: B0031N6GSI
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #429,728 Paid in MP3 Albums (See Top 100 Paid in MP3 Albums)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Change Your Life, Listen to the Slats, September 18, 2005

By 

Greg Meister "jag-nasty" (Marion, IA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Great Plains of San Francisco (Audio CD)

The Slats' "The Great Plains of San Francisco" is an album that changes lives. For about half a year, one of my friends kept telling me, "you really need to listen to this band, you'd love them." I always kinda shrugged it off and never really cared to listen. Why? I don't know. What I do know is that eventually they made me borrow this album. Thank God.

The album begins with an untitled intro of guitar noise, only to fade into the genius "The Weapon That I Used." A song so wonderful that by the time it is over, you can't help, but feel like you are listening to something revolutionary. This album is rebellion. This album is confusion. This album is punk rock.

After blasting through the trashy chaos of "A Payola Granola," we reach "The Fax of Life," a song that sounds like a combination of a Lennon tune off of the white album and a song from the unreleased 1967 Beach Boys album, "Smile." Once you have mellowed out for one minute and thirty-eight seconds, you are bombarded with the onslaught of "Hate Now," a track that sounds like it is the older, cooler and tougher brother of a tune off of Jawbreaker's 1994 release, "Unfun."

I could go on and explain how superb each track is, but then where would be the fun in that? I've already went through the first five tracks, I don't want to ruin the album for you. However, I will tell you that the album only gets better as it progresses. From the interesting lyrics of "Beatleloser" to the strange kazoo solo in "Tank Bikini," this album never
disappoints. The final track, "Soviet Brain II" is a wonderful soundscape which again brings the Beatles' white album to mind, but this time in some strange cocktail with Sonic Youth's underappreciated 1994 release, "Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star."

The opening of my review said that this album changes lives, but I have failed to give examples. One example would be that before my friend heard this album and band, they didn't quite appreciate the raw/beautiful honesty captured in lo-fi recordings such as this album (which by the way is one of the best sounding albums I have ever heard) and they now run a recording studio where they strive to make recordings as superb as this.

Another example could be that this album gave me hope. Hope for modern music, hope for the future. The Slats are everything that music should strive to be. Raw, honest, simple, sweet, intelligent, beautiful and bad ass. Buy this album now or live to regret it.

Since Amazon doesn't have the tracklisting, here you go:
01 -
02 - The Weapon That I Used
03 - A Payola Granola
04 - The Fax Of Life
05 - Hate Now
06 - Diatomic
07 - Rocket Reds
08 - Exit The Green Gable
09 - Beatleloser
10 - Obliterate These Beats
11 - Tank Bikini
12 - Momentum Magnetation Machine
13 - You Ruined A Good Idea
14 - Soviet Brain II

Also, this album was released in 2002 on the Tyros Label.
For more info on the Slats, check out their website:
http://www.theslats.com