Laika and the Cosmonauts

Zero Gravity (Upstart)
by Mark Phinney

Wooo-eeee! Grab the laughing gas and my NASA Bermuda shorts – I’m off to Venus in a cosmic Woody with my favorite Finnish wave-crashers. Oh yeah, blond boys ‘n’ girls, Laika is the master of my space domain; I’m a surf spy on a mission to Mars with a board that’ll blast ultra sci-fi rays to the outer reaches of any ear on any planet. I get so fuckin’ horny with Dance Fever syndrome when the name Laika is hurled through space. Upstart has re-released a compilation of early singles and B-sides from everyone’s fave fun Fins. This stuff is nuclear, it’s like holy water on my stick. I want to have a big cookout this summer and invite these cosmic riders to open up the floodgates with their groovy twist-burgers. This disc is amazing family fun, comprising tunes from a time before anyone on the planet knew the name Laika and some from before anyone could pronounce it correctly. Come on, how could you not freak out to “Do The Laika?” I want to “do the Laika” every freakin’ day, man! “Fugitive” is too cool for school, making me feel like I’m being hunted down by surf radicals looking for my secret trade plans. The Cosmonauts are wave-ridin’ bad boys hanging onto outlaw sounds that have paved the way for surf do-gooders both local and national. The man who can match the hair in this band (Morrissey excluded) is on my top-ten list of hip coolsters. This is a keen platter, so bring out the parents and twist the cosmos away.