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Wednesday, March 15, 2006

I don't actually know what this CD is called

Sometime in 2004, I was looking through a Boston radio station's "please take this crap" bin and found a CD that appeared to be released under the name The Uptown Club. I say "appeared" because the cover looks like this:

Is the name of this band The Uptown Club, as is written on the side of the package? Or is it Matt Bryan, who, according to the insert, wrote most and performed all of the songs? And, if it is by Matt Bryan, is the name of the album The Uptown Club or Admission?
I still have no clue as to the answers to these questions.
On top of that, I have no idea who this guy is, other than that the mailing address for this CD is in New York City, and that it was released on Tanager Records.
That said, the music is some of the weirdest pop I have ever heard.
The first thing you think of upon hearing this CD's synth-based pop is Stephin Merritt. And I mean that as a huge compliment, in fact, the only one this CD is getting. Because then the vocals come in.
Matt Bryan's voice is just totally unappealing. Homeless drunk unappealing. And it sings some truly atrocious lyrics on this record, things like "looking forward to getting behind, in P.S. 69." But the worst part of that is that it comes during what seems to be an attempt at an aggressive rock song. Sadly for Matt Bryan, this attempt works even less well than Journey's.
The reason I keep coming back to this CD, though (and the reason you're reading about it now), is that it has some near-hits mixed in with its complete misses.

The Light of the Moon
and
The Witness
are the best examples of this. You want to love them, but you can't, then you want to hate them, but you can't quite do that either. I have probably never been this on-the-fence about a record.

On the other hand, there is no doubt in my mind that
Gun Moll
and
Fire the Queen of England!
are laughably horrendous.

If, for some weird reason, you want more of this stuff, I have no clue what to tell you, except to email tanagerstuff@yahoo.com.