Quasi

The Sword of God (Touch & Go)
by Jon Sarre

Well ya know the Quasi duo of Sleater Kinney’s Janet Weiss and Sam “Puffy” Coomes (he of Heatmeiser and Elliot Smith sidemandom fame) are local heroes here in Portland, Ore-gone, can’t say I’ve ever listened to ’em, tho’, cuz the people I usually hang out with aren’t wont to throw in onea their records, and if ya came across one in their collection, they’d probably get all embarrassed and blame their girlfriend or somethin’. So that would leave me to go out and buy one, but I usually shop in stores with vast collections of old LPs retailin’ for 50 cents (“Hey look! Paul Revere and the Raiders!”) and Quasi records aren’t gonna crop up there for at least fifteen to twenty years, if they show up at all and I doubt I’ll even remember at that point.

Anyhow, lotsa people think Quasi are the elephant’s britches, tho’ like I said, I never bothered to find out. Coomes plays lotsa keys’n’guitar, too; Weiss drums steady pound pound pound and sometimes, like on “Fuck Hollywood” (it’s not as good as the Public Enemy/Ice Cube/Big Daddy Kane collaboration of the same name), they get all free jazzy and some guy named Stanley Zappa (Frank’s kid? His nephew? Who knows?) blows his sax out and I figure I can deal with this alright. Thing is, most of Sword of God is pretty blah blah blah sing singy-songy and they get real serious about bein’ pretty yet quirky (cuz like in “Genetic Science,” this broken-soundin’ Casio thingamabob shows up and does a kinda solo almost like a guitar, and the grunt rock into of “Seal the Deal” seques into indie rock “euphorism” culminatin’ with a minuscule jangle guitar solo). “The Curse of Having It All” smells like college radio “hit” material and that’s enough for me to not really like it (my fave on this, “It’s Raining,” in a twisted way sounds like Del Shannon’s “Runaway” crossed with Dion’s “The Wanderer”). “Goblins & Trolls” has a big fat riff that’s copped from somethin’ I have on the tip of my brain stem, yet I can’t quite get it out (Sabbath???!!!), but it’s still purty like the alt-country “Better Luck Next Time.” The closer, “Rock & Roll Can Never Die,” is an instrumental and mebbe Quasi’s bein’ ironic too, cuz it’s pretty much based on an AC/DC riff with cowbell added just in case ya didn’t get the joke, if there indeed is one…
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