Eureka California - Versus (2016)

'Summer's here and the time is right for getting blackout drunk in the street.' Eureka California's going way too fast, and if they don't slow down they're gonna crash. Like peak Elvis Costello, they think if they keep the wisecracks and the puns coming fast enough they can avoid facing the truth that death comes for everyone and nothing dies faster than dreams. Versus, their 3rd album in 3 years, is the first one recorded in a studio (by MJ from Hookworms at Suburban Home Studios in Leeds, UK) and it gives EC a power they've never had before. It's incredible that two people can make such a big sound, but Jake Ward and Marie A. Uhler have developed a near-telepathic ability after years of playing together, and while they've always been good, Versus is their first stab at greatness, soaked in television & gin & the kind of language you hear everyday but you never heard quite like this. Endlessly self-referential and endlessly self-destructive, stuck on an endless treadmill of tension & release, of megalomania & doubt. Versus is agoraphobic fight songs, songs about loving television more than people because people always let you down and the static from the set makes more sense than the static coming out of their mouths. EC songs exist in a world where ordering a pizza is fraught with anxiety and you have to laugh to keep from dying. I Will Write Mine Over Potomac is all loneliness and fraying nerves. Fear and Loathing in the Classic City synthesizes Damon Albarn and Jonathan Richman. And those aren't even the singles. If Performer called last year's Crunch Album Of The Month, what are they going to call this one? The Big Takeover said 'One can't help but wonder where Eureka California will be in another year. Miles ahead of now, no doubt. That should be quite the album.' It is. Some of our favorite records are the ones where the band sounds like they need a vacation only they're moving too fast to stop and so everything comes out wired & exhausted all at once think Aladdin Sane, Get Happy, Strangeways Here We Come. And Versus fits that mold, a white-knuckle ride through a tattered psyche and a brain that just won't shut up. It's too smart for self-pity and too drunk to think clearly. Eureka California sound like they're running out of time, just like you and just like me. Only EC's End Times sound so much glorious than ours, as we twitch and whimper at the incoming waves of radiated foam.