CRAZY MARY
She Comes In Waves (Humsting Records)
Astronaut Dubs (Humsting Records)
Reviewed by Shaun Dale

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Crazy Mary is a NYC based quintet that's grabbed considerable attention on the college radio front with a pair of indie releases. Last year's She Comes In Waves is a fine representation of what they do.

What they do is a fin de siecle style of psychedelia that carries hints of influences including the Velvet Underground, Blondie and the Cramps. Add the band's own somewhat quirky outlook and classic DIY production values and you've got instant college radio classics. A leap to the next step, if they want to take it, will probably require rethinking those production values a bit, but if they're happy with how they're doing, they have an audience that's clearly happy with how they're doing it.

Their latest, Astronaut Dubs, is an EP length collection of remixes from She Comes In Waves and their 1998 debut, Passion Pit. I haven't heard Passion Pit, so I don't know if they improved on "Lightnin' Strikes" or "Johnny Thunders," but "Shock Me," from Waves, was born for the double dub treatment it gets here. The good news is that Astronaut Dubs finds the band exploring ways to reshape their sound, and the ways they find work pretty damn well. Well enough for that next step? That's up to people like you to decide. Which you can't do if you don't check them out. Which you should do.

Track Lists:

She Comes In Waves: Burned * Cancer On The Photograph * Shot By Bullets * She Comes In Waves * Paris (1944) * Consider * No Resistance * Shock Me * Calendar Green * City's On Fire * Talking To Wendy * A Little Faith

Astronaut Dubs: Shock Me (Solar Dub) * Shock Me (Lunar Dub) * She Comes In Waves (Venus Dub) * She Comes In Waves (Mars Dub) * No Resistance (Black Hole Dub) * Johnny Thunders (Radioactive Dub) * Lightnin' Strikes (Intergalactic Dub)

© 2000 - Shaun Dale