Grubstake - Bestest

Review of 'The Bestest' from Chord Magazine July 07: Boston's sludgiest Rock two-piece has celebrated it's recent relocation to Philly with a series of rerecordings, lifting some of the finest songs from it's past three CDs and reworking them in sonically gussied-up versions that occasionally, horror of horrors, can even be called pretty. Shocking stuff from songwriter Pat McHugh, whose ear for a pretty melody like that of 'Meteor Shower' is appreciated less often than his knack for making his guitar sound like it's being amped through speakers filled with rich, loamy mud. The newly beefed up versions always chug along with a delightfully glammy crunch, and even a decidedly sinister tune like 'Whispering Blues' comes off feeling like something you could take home to Mom and give her only the mildest case of the creeps. There's still plenty of bluesy snarl in McHugh's sweetened and often double-tracked vocals 'Lost at Sea' kicks your ass across the room but the hit of the set is the amazing 'The Time Is Out,' which sounds like what Marc Bolan would have written if he'd had the chance to be inspired by Get Behind Me Satan. Essential listening, and for the late-night partying crowd, the jam of the summer.

1) Recession Blues 2001
2) The Time Is Out
3) Lost at Sea
4) Early in September
5) Meteor Shower
6) Whispering Blues
7) Ballad of Sharon Depaygne
8) Y I Hate Musicians
9) Midnight Creep
10) Sick Day
11) Albuquerque
12) My Neighbor