Rheostatics – The Blue Hysteria

Here’s another gem that I found at Sonic Boom in Toronto on my trip there in May. It was $2.99, which once again shows that they sometimes drastically underprice works of art…

Rheostatics – The Blue Hysteria

I like to play word association when I think of Rheostatics: creative brilliant weird noisy adventurous colourful rawk stories intelligent fun…

See? For those of you who already know the Rheos’ work, and maybe even have heard/own this album, you’re nodding along in agreement and thinking the same thing I am, that these guys were popular, it’s true, but they should have been even bigger. It’s not a reflection on their work, so much as it’s a commentary on the state of modern rock radio that these guys weren’t everywhere all the time.

I could go into specifics for each song, like the obvious Neil Young homage of Bad Time To Be Poor, the science fiction fun of Fat, the 70s rawk (Blue Oyster Cult, anyone?) of Feed Yourself, or the roomy 60s swing of The Idiot… hell, Four Little Songs has so many songs in it all by itself… But trying to tell you about each song isn’t fair. Even listing off those few is just the tip of the iceberg. Besides, I might hear one thing, you’d hear another, so let’s just leave it as:

Rheo albums are so good, so varied, so smart, and the Blue Hysteria is another such work in their discography. It’s jangly pop, straight up rock, psychedelic beauty, crunchy metal chunks, and band geek humour all in one. This is what happens when you put superlative players together and let them give full rein to their imaginations. There’s so much going on in each track, it demands repeat listens. One spin does not do it justice.

Full marks. I loved this album.