Rare Archival Discoveries From an Iconic Powerpop Band
Skooshny are contemporaries of both Elvis Costello and the Church, two references which validate the consistently brilliant quality of the band’s output, They’re revered in the powerpop demimonde for their bright, catchy, guitarishly rich anthems and frontman Mark Breyer’s slashingly clever wordplay. The band more or less called it quits back in the zeros, but Breyer has continued with a similarly erudite, irresistibly catchy series of mostly duo projects under the name Son of Skooshny.
It seemed that Skooshny’s final release was a brooding cover of a rare late 60s Robin Gibb single, Saved by the Bell, but it turns out that there was more rare, unreleased material in the can. Their new ep, Deep Dive is just out and streaming at Bandcamp. It’s a collection of newly digitized recordings dating all the way back to their teenage days in the 70s.
With Breyer’s labyrinthine chord changes and guest John Bunkelman’s dancing bassline, the primitive 1972 basement performance of One Wrong Move – the first thing that two of the band’s core members would ever got on tape – is a dead ringer for the Move circa 1967, with an American accent. By comparison, the second track, No For Yes is prime Skooshny, featuring all three members – Breyer, guitarist/bassist Bruce Wagner and drummer David Winogrond – and bristles with layer upon layer of guitars and a characteristically aphoristic Breyer lyric.
The final three tracks are lo-fi home recordings that would later be released as full-band productions in 1991. The tantalizingly brief Masking the Moon – a song title for our time, huh? – is just Breyer slamming out catchy changes on his acoustic, with some vocal harmonies overdubbed afterward:
Napping without dreams
Is sleeping without real proof
Tapping on the beams
Is a cat on a cold steel roof
The cafe band plays on and I open my eyes
Two moons in the mirror that I recognize
Likewise, Dessert For Two features Breyer solo on twelve-string; it could be a particularly catchy, wistful Marty Willson-Piper folk-rock number. The final cut here is Malibu, a haphazard home recording featuring multi-instrumentalist Mike Thompson, part Beatles, part southern soul. If this is Skooshny’s genuine swan song, they had a hell of a run. Not bad for a band who in their entire multiple decade career played one single show: an Arthur Lee benefit.