The Noise reviews Low Rises
The Noise, July 2006
Album Reviews: Francis DiMenno
Here we have older stuff previously heard only on demos and newer stuff well worth the five-year wait: the quirky but epic "King Kong" is so brilliant that you've got to wonder how it is that Baby Ray isn't enormously famous; maybe, like Mission Of Burma, they were twenty years ahead of their time. (Speaking of which, "Devil Ray" sounds an awful lot like the tail end of a Burma song!) What follows is a feast: the meandering "Idiots Are Out," the sinuous and insinuating "Rocket-O," the sardonically jolly irony of "You Could Go to College," the beautiful segue from the persnickety "The Fools" to the cascading grandeur of "Red Flags" -- once again, Baby Ray has captured lightning in a bottle. (Note: When you play "Schoolbus Scenarios" and "I Look, There You Are" on a DVD player at 4x speed they sound really great.) Then there's the melodic "Superbitch," not to be confused with the frenetic 1:12 throwaway "Superbutch" which is THE GREATEST SONG IN THE WORLD (though maybe I'm prejudiced).