Rainy Day Fun

The first full-length release by Brother JT is a much more concise and pop-oriented affair than the sprawling acid rock freakouts of his initial EP, Music for the Other Head. Recorded by himself on a four-track, Rainy Day Fun is exactly the sort of casual, loose affair implied by the title. Not that John Terlesky's previous band, the garage poppy Original Sins, had been paragons of instrumental virtuosity and flawless production, but Rainy Day Fun sounds like the efforts of a talented, shambling singer/songwriter enjoying a spare afternoon or two with himself, cutting ragged but right pieces of psychedelically tinged pop. The production is, to put it bluntly, utterly atrocious. The drums are inaudible most of the time and as hollow as someone beating on a cardboard box with a stick when they're audible. The guitars sound like they're being recorded from the next room and the vocals sound like Brother JT is mumbling drunkenly, face down on the floor. Seriously, Pavement in 1992 would have listened to these songs and thought they could stand to be cleaned up a little. And yet, that's part of the sloppy charm of this album, which is an utterly unpretentious piece of bedroom psychedelia, the sort of thing obscurantists will treasure in a couple of decades.