Thunder Hips And Saddle Bags

General | Jan 2010

Reviews

Luke
Reviewed 2011-03-30
Encouraged but not influenced by Rockin' Robin and Johnny B. Goode (as confirmed by the Human Skab himself on this recording), this compilation highlights the best of the Skab's musical career (both tapes and an interview). Acoustic guitar, piano, banging on picnic tables, and toy guns make up most of the instrumentation here, with Skab's gritty just-before-puberty vocals adding a hardcore edge to the overall sound. No FCCs, he is 10.

Most tracks are pretty short; around a minute in length, aside from three 6+ minute epics. Notable tracks are as follows:

1 (1:36) Ethereal harmonica or accordion (I'll blame it on the 4-track quality) complements a great introduction to who Human Skab is as a person. (Open your show with this)
***3 (2:19) A song about a bad motherfucker laughing through a whole scolding
*****5 (8:25) Skab takes on radiation and everybody being dead, with samples. No seriously, this is the best track. PLAY IT
*7 (1:30) Skab's ballad
11 (1:06) Cutlery jam
*13 (3:39) Noisy, dark, scary, lots of distorted moaning
***14 (1:04) The death of the binosaurs, with harmonica
15 (6:03) Impressive lyrical improvisation about the need to destroy the Soviet Union "the Russian will go to hell with Hitler, just as Hitler did"
17 (1:11) The ~50 second of instrumentation in this song sounds a lot like Neutral Milk Hotel
19 (1:17) This is the prose/poem (can someone circle the correct word) about the kid who forgot his spelling words, and wantin' spankings, and burning buns
20 (6:39) the first 30 seconds of this are a damning rant against radio people/stupid freaks. one really good burn, worth at least **** before a piano solo for 3 minutes, then the pattern repeats
21 (11:25) is an '87 interview of Human Skab by a Boston radio station that had him at the top of their weekly charts. While he may not be able to beat out Cut Copy for that title here at the Zu 90.1 FM, it's worth a listen.




A couple updates:

pretty sure this got a 10.0 from pitchfork so it should at least be getting as many plays as strokes are getting

9 (1:08) is a pretty good song about hurting nature and god by littering
12 (2:53) features a duo with some other skab so play it too

Recent airplay

Mining The Radiation
Mining The Radiation
Mining The Radiation
The Final SunsetJun 04, 2015
We Need To Destroy The Soviet Union
Death Of The Dinosaurs
FishbowlAug 02, 2014
Mining The Radiation
The Final AporeiaJun 12, 2014

Charting

2011-04-03 — 2011-06-05
Week EndingAirplays
Jun 5 5
May 29 3
May 22 4
May 15 4
May 8 4
May 1 4
Apr 24 1
Apr 17 3

Track listing

1. Screamin' Demon
2. Drunk And Staggerin' Around
3. Throwin' Rocks At Windows
4. Grandest Fight Of The Year
5. Mining The Radiation
6. Go For It
7. Dead Baby Blues
8. Playin' Guitar Best I Can
9. Under The Viaduct
10. Bullheads Are Ugly
11. Africa Song
12. John Wayne Is Dead
13. Eat My Skabs / Song Of The Century
14. Death Of The Dinosaurs
15. We Need To Destroy The Soviet Union
16. Guitar Of Africans
17. First Kid To Hit The Radio
18. Phone Goof Off
19. Bein' Bad
20. Piano Concert