What We Had Bonus Tracks by Wednesday Week @ ARTISTdirect.com

There are moments on Wednesday Week's debut album, What We Had, when you can't shake the feeling that they were to the Bangles what John Cafferty was to Bruce Springsteen. However, while Kristi Callan's songs may have followed the same pop influences as the Bangles and the band's jangly guitars revealed a similar enthusiasm for classic folk-rock and power pop, What We Had captures the sort of energy and spunk that their counterparts lost after All Over the Place. Don Dixon's punchy but muscular production gives Wednesday Week an admirably full and energetic sound on these sessions, and the band is tight without seeming mechanical; David Nolte's lead guitar carries the melodies while keeping the horizons clean and clear, and drummer Kelly Callan and bassist Heidi Rodewald are a solid rhythm section who hold down the beat and bolster the tunes with smarts and efficiency. The group's attempts to reach for big themes on songs like "Suicide" and "Missionary" don't quite hit the mark, but the melodies invariably carry the day and the group certainly knows how to make the most of them. What We Had is very much a product of its time -- the production and songcraft announces this as a product of the mid-'80s even if you didn't know the release date -- but if Wednesday Week weren't the most original band on the block, they captured more of what was good about the era than what was bad, and all these years later these songs are at least as enjoyable (if not more so) as that copy of Different Light you haven't played in years. [Noble Rot Records reissued What We Had in 2008, which was a pleasant surprise given that the album was never much of a hit, but the label also went the extra mile and added ten bonus tracks to the package. Wednesday Week's independent debut EP, 1983's Betsy's House, is included in full, along with another five tracks from singles, compilations, and the band's second and final cassette-only album, 1990's No Going Back. If this release doesn't bring together everything Wednesday Week recorded, it features enough to be considered a nearly definitive overview of their career, and serious fans of the poppier side of the '80s alternative scene will want to have this in their collections.] ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide

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Red Tunic Troll

posted on Sat, 15 Mar 2008 11:38:56

Underknown Paisley Underground-era indie-rock

The Los Angeles-bred Wednesday Week debuted alongside the Paisley Underground on the early '80s compilations "The Radio Tokyo Tapes" and "Warf Rat Tales," but their sound had more to do with minimalist pop (ala Oh-Ok) and new wave indie rock (ala The Neats) than the flowering, droning and buzzing neo-psych. What linked them to their SoCal contemporaries was a DIY garage sensibility which flowered in an initial batch of songs that were written and sung with the emphatic, confessional tone of diary entries.

This CD reissue augments the group's 1987 full-length LP for Enigma ("What We Had") with their earlier 1983 EP for Warf Rat ("Betsy's House"), and five selections from both before and after the album. Programmed in chronological order (14-18, 21, 20, 22, 1-13, 23), you can hear the band evolve from DIY roots ("I Hate Lying to Mom") to frenetic, angular post-punk ("I Don't Know") to Byrdsian/REM-styled chime ("Christmas Here" and "You Wanted Me To Hang Around"), to rock ("The Leopard") electric-folk ("Also Clear"), and finally to the heavier, big-drum sound of the LP.

Produced by Don Dixon (REM, Chris Stamey, Windbreakers), the album tracks are thicker, more polished and ultimately more generic than the earlier and later sides produced by Vitus Matare, Ethan James and Earle Mankey. Several album tracks sound quite like Holly & The Italians or Bonnie Hayes & The Wild Combo, particularly in the vocals. But even as the group moved away from the sparseness of their first EP, Kristi and Kelly Callan's lyrics retained the intimate personality lost in major label contracts (and subsequent video shoots) by contemporaries like The Bangles.

Kristi Callan's chameleon vocals can reaqlly be heard on two of the bonus tracks. 1983's terrific version of Gary Valentine's "You Wanted Me To Hang Around" (from the "Girls Can't Help It" compilation) sounds remarkably like early Olivia Newton-John, and 1990's "No Going Back" channels Susan Jacks of the Poppy Family. Though this CD isn't a complete band discography (there are numerous EP and compilation album tracks missing), this is a superb overview of Wednesday Week's core catalog, and a welcome reintroduction to one of the lesser known indie bands of the L.A.'s mid-80s. [©2008 redtunictroll at hotmail dot com]

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