Medicine

Medicine took the fuzzed-out, swirling, hazy sound of shoegaze to extremes. They wrote ultra-hooky pop songs and flooded them with distortion and noise. Not in the barely controlled, primal fashion of obvious influence the Jesus & Mary Chain, but also not in the meticulous, cerebral manner of their other main influence, My Bloody Valentine. They are located somewhere in between, somewhere more American. Aruca is taken from the mind-bendingly excellent Shot Forth Self Living, and actually sounds the most like MBV of any of their songs. It has a baggy dance beat, mumbled and incoherent vocals, Kevin Shields' inspired glide guitar, and some musique concrete percussion sounds. On the album, the song served as a moment of quiet and calm amidst the storm; here it sounds okay, but a bit too derivative. The rest of the disc is made up of non-LP recordings. "Onion Flower" boasts very strange Brad Laner vocals on the verses, and an explosive guitar maelstrom in the place of a chorus, "The Powder" is a surging pop song with strong melody and wild guitar sounds throughout, "World Hello" is a long ballad with a big guitar solo leading off, and beautiful shared vocals from Laner and Beth Thompson. All three of the B-sides are too weak to be on Shot Forth, but easily could stand next to anything on the band's next albums, and would tower over the tracks on their weak final album. Fans of the band should do their best to track down a copy. ~ Tim Sendra, All Music Guide